Fuck!! Do Over - Workplace Violence.

[Dean from Australia]

Thanks campy.

I am already back at work (I don't have the luxury of taking too much down time) but I'm at the Children's Hospital tonight where the worst thing likely to happen is a shitty little kid will give me a mouthful of smart talk. The contract stuff I do in the adult hospital is good money but not rib breakingly good.

[Dean from Australia]

It's funny you know...I always think of that episode when Keith ponders what it would be like to pick up a baby and...you know...

I shouldn't really go there...

[Jo_Culprit]

Originally Posted by Dean from Australia

I was sent home. I feel pretty awful and I'm jumping at shadows. This is the second time I've been assaulted in 6 months and I'm beginning to fear that if I get assaulted again, I could well end up a basket case. I've been an ICU Nurse for 10 years (a Registered Nurse for 15) and I fear I'm hitting the wall.

How do I get through this? Any advice? Any war stories of your own?

Originally Posted by Keith

Jesus, Jo. Do you understand he was stopping the bleeding AS he was taking punches?

I probably should've chosen my words better in my advice, I meant it as a fix for the jumping at shadows and fear of being assaulted. I'm quite impressed that Dean was able to recover himself enough after being hit several times to then act and stop the blood gushing out of the patients neck. I didn't mean to demean his performance during the incident.

Originally Posted by Dean from Australia

I can usually handle myself pretty well and probably don't see any value in self defense classes. The thing is, I haven't had any recent education on how to handle patients in violent situations and policies relating to what you can and cannot do differ across different work sites. You gotta be careful because you don't want to get into a situation where you yourself can be sued.

This is very true, especially when the policies of the health system are concerned. Self defense is also disarming and restraining and opponent in violent situations.

Originally Posted by Dean from Australia

I'm having a major beef with our state legislature right now about the gross under resourcing of our public hospitals. They deny that there is any problem whatsoever yet, across the entire system, there is evidence of staff routinely working double shifts (upwards of 20 hours at a time), staff like me getting abused or assaulted and staff burning out both physically and mentally. It's a cyclical thing I'm told. I guess I'm in the middle of the fucking cycle...

I was gonna ask what state your in but its probably the same story across the whole country.
(Edit: and i see now that you live in south australia)

Anyway Dean, hope your on the mend man.

[Dean from Australia]

Yeah, I'm doing okay man, thanks for asking.

There has been a push on to try and unify legislation and practices across the country (Australia has 7 states and 2 territories) but the problem has been that each state is governed either by the conservatives (Lib/Nat Coalition) or the less conservatives (Austrlalian Labor Party) and they all love to grandstand and blame shift on health whenever there is an opportunity to score cheap political points.

Nurses like me and Doctors end up being political pawns to be used and abused at the whim of the incumbent government.

I've been popping pills like a mo-fo over the weekend and that's keeping on top of my pain. The irony is, I'll probably end up with an addiction to prescription meds as a result of all this.

Isn't life grand.

[Junkenstein]

be craeful with the painkillers, man. i know you're on AD like ai am as well and no one needs two addictions to deal with.

on the subject. At this point its just a shitty situation. i have the feeling that in the mind of your workplace, peoiple who deal with what you deal with are supposed to be "used" to this kind of stuff. if they hit you, you cant react. so you just have to take it.

i had an ex girlfriend who worked as a nurse in an er, night shift. A couple of times she was attacked b y junkies or drunk people, one even threw a wheelchair at her. usually security watches out what happens, its supposed to be their job. so in cases like yours, you just have to take it or look for another job.

i remember this girl telling me about one of the security guys making threatening movies on her (borderline rapey stuff). so one night i went there armed witha box cutter. conincidence stopped me but in that case i wouldve been dead, in jail or whatever and she wouldve been fired.

not the same situations but gives an idea of how fucked beyond redemption those places are.

[Cart Horse]

Really sorry to hear about that Dean. Campy had some good advice. Talk it out with as many people as possible. Try to stay cool. Reassess. Damn terrible. I don't know a happy nurse.

[Dean from Australia]

I'm not totally unhappy in my job - it does have it's plusses...somewhere in there. But nurses are increasingly forced to do more with less and situations like the one I got caught in are happening more and more.

To date, the only support I've had is the support I've sought out. It shouldn't be that way but there you go.

Thank god for guys like you though.

[Airon]

I wanted to be a nurse until junior year of high school, when I became a CNA.

I worked at a nursing home for (the most depressing) two months, and one night, we were feeding the residents, and this one dude didn't want to eat. I was still in training, so I looked at the nurse that was working with me, and she told me to keep trying to feed him. This happened three times, and he hit me. It didn't leave a mark, didn't hurt, but I was a bit shocked at what happened.

That was four years ago.

Reading this, I just realized that if I ended up going through with it, entering the nursing program at my local community college, I'd be an LPN, right now.
This could've happened to me today. I'm in the radiology program in the same college, though, and we start clinicals on the 20th. It could still happen to me. It's a scary thought.

I hope you're doing better, man.

[Dean from Australia]

Hey - that's really cool that you're in a radiology program. Radiology is a great area to get into and the career path is pretty grand too.

I guess the thing with radiology is that once you've got a patient in the MRI machine, they're trapped so the fuckers can't do anything but buck like a spaz.

Good luck with your clinicals Airon.

[Airon]

Yeah, I got lucky, getting in there. I'm just hoping I do well. Thanks.

Thing is, though, it's not just MRI or CT. I gotta do X-rays and position people just right, which means they gotta participate.