A nurse is recovering from her injuries after being attacked at Vancouver General Hospital on March 13, in what the nurses’ union calls the latest example of violence against nurses in the workplace.
A Vancouver Coastal Health spokesperson confirmed that a health-care provider and another patient were assaulted at the hospital that day, and the attacked patient was treated there while the nurse is now recovering at home.
Adriane Gear, the president of the B.C. Nurses’ Union, said the attack happened at the inpatient psychiatry unit at the hospital and called for more security workers there.
“A horrific incident took place on March 13,” she said. “One of our members … a nurse new in her career, was strangled unconscious and had to be dragged behind the nursing station to safety by her colleagues.”
“The person that strangled her was a patient.”
Gear says that the psychiatry inpatient units at VGH are in a separate building, and it takes several minutes for security staff to get there from the emergency department.
“That is not acceptable,” she said.
“These are patients … some of them have very concerning behaviours,” she added. “They have well-documented histories of violence, and the employer needs to do more to keep their staff and the other patients safe.”
Number of attacks on nurses
In the last few months, Gear pointed to several attacks on nurses in hospitals by patients and called for more security officers in workplaces to prevent nurses from leaving the profession.
Those officers are staff members who are trained in anticipating and de-escalating violence in health-care settings, according to the province.
Gear said there was a stabbing at VGH just a few months ago, as well as a case where a machete-wielding man threatened staff at Eagle Ridge Hospital in Port Moody.
“What is it going to take? Is it going to take one of my members actually being killed on the job in order for some substantive changes to take place?” the union president asked.
A Health Ministry spokesperson said in a statement that it has approximately 750 full-time equivalent security guards working across 30 health-care facilities as of last spring.
They added that the ministry is looking at opportunities to expand to additional hospital facilities.
CBC News has contacted WorkSafeBC, the province’s workplace regulator, to find out if it was notified of the attack.
