Prosecutors in Oregon rarely pursue those charges, Skog said.Ī few months ago, Skog was punched by a patient who’d come to the Portland VA hospital for mental health care. Things like punching and kicking - assaults with no weapon involved - are generally misdemeanors. Skog says even when health care workers report assaults, it’s hard to get law enforcement to take action. And legally, emergency department staff are still required to assess and stabilize them. “And I think that distrust is one of the main reasons we’re seeing this increase in violence.”Īnother problem, according to Skog, who works for Providence Health and for the Portland VA, but does not speak for them, is that there are rarely consequences for hitting, kicking, or threatening hospital staff.Ī patient can threaten staff, be escorted out by security, and then return the next day seeking care again. Alex Skog, an emergency department doctor and the president of the Oregon chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians. “Now, because there’s been so much politics mixed into health care, patients regularly doubt my motives,” said Dr. Alex Skog, president of the Oregon chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians, Aug. It’s not just nurses getting verbally and physically abused either.ĭr. Her tech tried to help her, but they got shoved by the patient too. “He just said, get away from me, you f-ing b, I’m going to f-ing kill you,” she said. He was trying to leave the hospital with an IV still in his arm, Clendenin said. “I feel that people are so angry with the times and how the world is right now, they’re coming in so angry and so upset and they have a target to go right after us when we’re trying to help them,” said Tiffany Clendenin, an emergency department nurse at Legacy Salmon Creek in Vancouver, one of the protest’s organizers.Ī patient in the emergency department threatened to kill her the day after Smallwood’s death. And an outpatient clinic in southeast Portland recently closed for two days due to a bomb threat. At Oregon Health & Science University, nurses, through their union, have asked for more training in how to handle weapons they find on patients. Nationwide, 73% of all the reported workplace injuries due to violence happened in health care and social services.īut across the Portland metro area, health care workers say they’re now feeling less safe than they did even just a few years ago. In 2018, for example, health care workers in the private sector filed more disability claims due to injuries from violence at work than people in every other private sector profession combined. Nurses and their assistants are regularly threatened, shoved, and punched by patients or patients’ family members. Homicides in hospitals are rare, but violence is not. Smallwood’s death has struck a nerve among health care workers because many of them say while tragic, it did not feel surprising. “Dying or being assaulted is not part of our job!” she called out, to cheers from the crowd. “They shouldn’t be trespassed for that… It’s part of your job.” “We’re told, you don’t need to call the police for that,” she said into the megaphone. Suarez says too often nurses are told to accept being hit, kicked and threatened as part of their job. Nurses Bobbi Sue McColllum, left, and Jennifer Suarez at the candlelight vigil outside Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center July 29, 2023. She told the crowd that nurses rarely get the support they need from managers to protect themselves. Suarez, like many of the marchers, had filled hers in to read “assaulted.” The organizers of the march passed out those red and white stickers with “hello, my name is” printed on them. Suarez wore a backward baseball cap and a delicate gold nose ring. “You know, people saying they’re going to come back and blow our heads off. “Hitting, punching, being choked out,” she shouted. The protesters gathered on a street corner and Jennifer Suarez, an emergency department nurse at Legacy Mount Hood, took the megaphone. He was dealing with a patient and her partner who’d allegedly brought guns into the hospital’s family birth center. That’s where a security guard, Bobby Smallwood, was shot and killed in July. Last weekend, a crowd of doctors, nurses and their family members marched outside Legacy Good Samaritan hospital in Northwest Portland. Health workers say they get too little support from managers and law enforcement when they are threatened by patients. Nurses and doctors from Providence Health, Legacy Health, OHSU, and the Portland VA joined a protest outside Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center July 29, 2023. Some health care workers in Portland say they’ve been trying for years to get their employers and local politicians to do more to keep them safe.
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