On a busy Saturday night in our emergency department, a rather large male involved in a motor vehicle crash required evaluation for a suspected head injury. Suddenly, a shriek and a thump came from his room. Our ED team of several nurses and a physician assistant ran in to find him face down on the floor.
To treat him safely we needed to log-roll him onto his back, but he became agitated when we tried to move him. Suddenly the patient grabbed the physician assistant and tossed him across the room. He then turned to me and flung me into the wall as if I weighed little more than the scrubs I was wearing.
We were in a very dangerous situation. Security was called but it was too late, the attack had already started. As we tried to reason with him, he grew more agitated and punched my physician assistant in the face, then threw a nurse into the heavy medical equipment next to the bed. She sustained nasty injuries to her back and ribs.
I have decades of experience in emergency medicine, and this attack forever transformed me. I have never felt less safe at work as I did during that incident and its aftermath. By stripping away my self-reliance and sense of safety, this incident left me with a sense of loss that I have not been able to fully replace.
Physicians deserve a support system that helps prevent these incidents and protects them when they occur. Imagine dedicating your professional life to helping people only to be assaulted by the patients who need your help the most.
Emergency physicians are all too familiar with these dangerous scenarios. In fact, nearly half of emergency physicians have been attacked on the job. It is not too much to ask to be able to do our jobs and help people without having to worry about being physically harmed or verbally abused.
The pandemic has proven the value of emergency physicians, but it seems like our patients’ trust in the health care system is deteriorating and long-simmering social tensions feel dangerously close to a boiling point. All of this exacerbates violence in the emergency department.
Fortunately, there is legislation under discussion that gives policymakers and hospital administrators an opportunity to make emergency departments safer for care teams and patients.
Emergency physicians and emergency nurses are united through the No Silence on ED Violence campaign and we are urging Congress to pass this legislation.
We must strengthen protections for professionals on the frontlines. That effort can begin in earnest when everyone stops accepting violence in the emergency department as part of the job.
By Rita A. Manfredi, MD, FACEP
Previously published by ACEP