A former affected person on the QEII Halifax Infirmary is talking out about security issues, alleging she witnessed firsthand the form of violence health-care employees expertise.
Mandie Pitre is sharing the story in gentle of a Code Silver incident on Wednesday within the hospital’s emergency room, the place three employees have been stabbed.
“If nothing is done to make sure that there is better safety and security for staff and for patients in the hospital, it’s just going to keep happening,” she stated.
Pitre was hospitalized within the orthopaedic unit with a dislocated ankle in September 2024. She says she awoke in the course of the evening and heard one other affected person talking with the nursing group on the opposite aspect of her alcove.
All of a sudden, she recollects, the tone shifted.
“There’s no security on the floor right now, and it’s just these six female nurses, that are all not very big. So then, they’re starting to freak out, and you can hear in their voice something significant is happening and it’s not good,” she stated.
Pitre says she later discovered the affected person had gotten into the nurses’ station and was threatening them with a pair of scissors. Workers known as police, who arrived on scene and tried to deescalate the scenario.
“They’re like, ‘You need to put down the scissors, you’re scaring the nurses and it’s making them not feel safe,’” she recalled.
“All of a sudden, just out of the blue, I hear this blood-curdling scream.”
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Pitre says she noticed the person run down the hallway previous her, and witnessed him hurting himself.
“And then he gets taken off the floor eventually and then it’s a whole crime scene in the hospital,” she stated.
A Halifax Regional Police spokesperson confirmed officers have been known as to the QEII on Sept. 11, 2024 for a weapons-related incident. Police stated workers in that scenario weren’t bodily injured.
After the latest assault, Pitre says she was disheartened to listen to nothing has modified.
Office violence is a significant concern for nurses — present and aspiring.
Tiffany McEwen, the president of the Canadian Nursing College students Affiliation, says it will possibly hamper college students from coming into the sphere.
“I thought to myself, ‘Is this really what I want to do? Do I want to go to work every day afraid that somebody might just lash out for no reason whatsoever, that I may end up off of work for six months a year, lose my income, be afraid, have post-traumatic stress from the incident?’” she stated.
“Violence doesn’t stop as soon as the assault is over.”
In accordance with the Nova Scotia Nurses Union, violence will be prevented.
Janet Hazleton, the union’s president, spoke up in regards to the challenge through the Federal, Provincial and Territorial Ministers of Well being assembly, which befell this week in Halifax.
“We’re saying that we need security in all our facilities 24/7,” stated Hazelton.
“We need security cameras. I think we need metal detectors. I spoke to the health ministers yesterday and the federal minister of health and I talked about this, and said it’s time.”
Karen Oldfield, CEO of Nova Scotia Well being, stated it’s doing what it will possibly to make the province’s ERs safer.
“I want them to know I’m doing everything in my power to ensure that they can feel safe in their workplace,” she stated in an interview Thursday.
She confirmed that Nova Scotia Well being had bought 5 hand-held metal-detecting wands to allow workers to seek for hid weapons, and that coaching to learn to use them has begun.
As nicely, she stated contract negotiations with the province’s nurses had led to an settlement to spend $7 million on new safety measures, resembling threat assessments and teaching programs. And he or she careworn that the well being authority and the nurses union have been deciding collectively on tips on how to make investments these funds.
In connection to Wednesday’s incident, 32-year-old Nicholas Robert Coulombe, of Halifax, is going through one depend of tried homicide, three counts of aggravated assault, three counts of assault with a weapon, and two counts of possession of a harmful weapon for the aim of committing against the law.
— With recordsdata from The Canadian Press
