'Slapping, punching, spitting': Missouri health care worker says violent patients forced hospital to issue panic buttons
On CNN Thursday, Lynne Yaggy, the chief nursing officer at a hospital in Branson, Missouri, told anchor Erin Burnett about why her hospital had to issue panic buttons to staff amid an outbreak of violence against health care workers.
"It's just awful," said anchor Erin Burnett. "I understand what you're saying, but I'm deeply shocked about this. It's horrible what you're talking about. I know that you've seen the violence against health care workers had already started to rise before the pandemic, and now the pandemic has made it much, much worse. What kind of things are you seeing? We have to be talking about physical things here."
"Sure," said Yaggy. "We've implemented reporting systems in the last ten years of health care, and they are more robust. So what we've asked staff to do is report things that happened to you at work, and that way start to have a record and baseline for what's happening. That could range anywhere from a verbal assault, someone screaming and yelling and cutting at you, threatening to you that could lead to slapping, punching, spitting, those things. That's just the nature of health care work. Now, some patients are demented and they don't have intent of harming you, and I think that's the hardest thing for health care workers. They don't want to report someone who is trying to hurt you."
Watch below:
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