Nurse Assaulted at Mental Health and Addictions Facility
The nurse was treated in hospital and is recovering at home. The nurse called BCNU's new nurses' violence support hotline and also reported the incident to the provincial call centre. The patient was arrested.
BCNU has been working hard to make sites safer for nurses. Recent staffing increases, including new psychiatric aides who are specially trained in violence de-escalation, have led to fewer code whites at the Hillside Psychiatric Centre in Kamloops. Changes are in progress at three other sites that BCNU and the Ministry of Health have targeted in a violence reduction plan.
Learn more about the help BCNU provides to nurses who have been assaulted while on the job: bcnu.org/violence.
For immediate emotional support, as well as a referral to the BCNU for assistance, the nurses' violence support hotline is open 24/7 for any member who has been physically or verbally assaulted while trying to provide safe patient care.
Nurses' Violence Support Hotline: 1-844-202-2728
Violence is not part of the job and much more work needs to be done to reduce the physical and long term psychological impacts from assaults in the workplace.
To enable us to continue lobbying for change and to provide ongoing evidence of this serious problem BCNU urges you to report any assault to the provincial call centre, where it will be logged as a workplace incident.