UPDATE: Doctor attacked by patient at Penticton Regional Hospital
PENTICTON – A Penticton doctor is recovering from a broken jaw and other facial injuries suffered during an alleged attack by a psychiatric patient at Penticton Regional Hospital Friday.
Police responded to a call at the psychiatric unit at 4:22 p.m. and RCMP arrested 30-year-old Gregory Stanley Nield at the hospital and charged him with assault causing bodily harm and aggravated assault.
Nurses on the psychiatric unit say the patient calmly walked out of a closed-door session with the doctor and announced he might be dead, according to a media release from the B.C. Nurses’ Union.
BCNU president Gayle Duteil says there is a dangerous lack of security at the province’s psychiatric and forensic facilities.
“Every day, nurses and other health care professionals put themselves on the line and risk being attacked on the job because of inadequate protection against violent patients,” she says.
The Interior Health Authority president and CEO Dr. Robert Halpenny says they have call buttons throughout the unit.
“Interestingly enough we’re working to improve that call system. We’re working on the infrastructure to put in personal alarm devices,” Halpenny says. “I’m not so sure in this situation it would have made all that much difference but it is something we are taking into consideration.”
He says staff took immediate action to respond to the incident and to focus their efforts on securing the safety of patients, requesting the assistance of the RCMP and providing medical care for the injured doctor.
“Interior Health expanded the violence prevention program in 2006 and over the last five years noticed a 38 per cent decrease in reports of violence,” Halpenny adds.
Along with personal alarms, the nurses’ union is demanding security personnel assigned specifically to the psychiatric units in hospitals, security cameras installed and it wants an assurance the patient accused of the assault won’t be returned to the unit in Penticton.
Halpenny says Interior Health will be working with the RCMP and WorkSafe B.C. to conduct a full review and investigation of the attack. The results of the review will be posted to their website.
“We remain committed to working with our physicians, nurses and staff to debrief this incident and seek lessons learned in order to provide the safest working environment possible while balancing the need to provide quality health care.”
RCMP Sgt. Rick Dellebuur says the suspect appeared in Penticton Provincial Court on Monday and has been remanded in police custody for another court appearance Tuesday. Charges of assault causing bodily harm are being recommended.
To contact the reporter for this story, email Howard Alexander at halexander@infonews.ca or call 250-491-0331. To contact the editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.
— This story was updated at 2:52 p.m., Monday, Dec. 8, 2014 to include information from the BCNU and the Interior Health Authority.
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7 responses
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YouCAN NOThave cameras and recordings of what’s going on ….. it violates the patient’s confidentiality……as a health care employee I would love to share the things I have to deal with, but I can’t. The patient deserves the right to be at their worst, at their weakest …… and to recover from that.They do not need or want to share that with the public.
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I understand your frustration, Randeep, but my daughter is an ER nurse so I know she doesn’t always have information available on the patients she’s treating.Why, I don’t know, sometimes I suspect because the “privacy” clauses prevent it, but she’d never say because that would be a violation of her oath to preserve her patients confidentiality, but I wonder if that might not be part of the problem?
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I agree Donna, ma’am there are many mental health people everywhere. One has to ask the question, why the (A) number of attacks is increasing (B) If the number is increasing, what hospital staff is doing wrong (C) If these are attacks from patience with mental health issues, why of all people, why would someone who knows about their mental health not know what and what not to say to agitate the patient. I think they should install Publicly Available Microphone Recordings of doctor patient interviews to clear any issues about who the victims are in these situations. If the patient is that dangerous, why is that assessment not happening fast enough? They’ll install cameras and buzzers but they WILL NOT Install Microphones for those interviews and that, that there people, is the conversation we need to hear in order to understand how to make sure and plan how to control this from happening like it has.
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