‘It’s never OK to hit a nurse’: nurse attacks on the rise across metro Atlanta, new analysis finds – WSB-TV Channel 2

ATLANTA — It’s a rising drawback that’s impacting our native well being care services — nurses are being attacked by sufferers.

Channel 2 Motion Information first reported on the hazard native nurses face in 2019, however a brand new evaluation has discovered that nurse assaults are on the rise with a mean of two nurses being attacked each hour in the USA.

Channel 2 investigative reporter Sophia Choi when by way of the numbers and located about 57 nurse assaults had been reported per day within the second quarter of 2022. That’s greater than 1,700 assaults a month.

Over the course of the 12 months, that’s almost 21,000 nurses attacked.

Channel 2 Motion Information reported on Sheila Jahn’s arrest in 2018. Jahn, 57, of Marietta, faces half a dozen costs for allegedly assaulting nurses, employees and threatening officers at Wellstar Kennestone Hospital.

Native nurses say assaults on them occur too typically.

“A affected person punched me within the chest, and I received two damaged ribs,” emergency room nurse Terri Sullivan mentioned.

Dr. Pleasure Edwards with Naturopathic Medication described the same assault on her.

“He began punching and flailing and he punched one of many guys and broke his nostril, punched me within the chest, knocked me on the ground,” Edwards mentioned.

“She pushed me so, I flew out of the room — actually. She was a really huge lady, pushed me and I flew out of the room, and I nearly fell,” household nurse practitioner Victoria Randle mentioned.

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A brand new evaluation by Press Ganey — a well being care analytics firm — discovered greater than two nurses had been assaulted each hour within the second quarter of 2022.

Many of the assaults occurred in emergency departments and psychiatric models.

“I notice that there are such a lot of extra sufferers with psychological points these days,” Edwards mentioned.

They’re additionally happening in pediatric models.

Sullivan helped push for a regulation that will increase the punishment to 5 to twenty years for assaulting an emergency well being care employee in Georgia. She says extra must be performed to cease the violence.

“Being assaulted just isn’t a part of the job, plain and easy. It’s by no means OK to hit a nurse,” Sullivan mentioned.

So what will be performed to cease the violence in opposition to nurses?

Press Ganey mentioned well being care organizations ought to implement reporting methods for record-keeping and security, make caregiver security a core worth — and set the expectation that violence on the job just isn’t accepted.

The company additionally mentioned well being care organizations also needs to train the warning indicators of violence and de-escalation methods.

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