What I'm Reading: "Stabbed. Kicked. Spit On. Violence in American Hospitals Is Out of Control," By Dr. Helen Ouyang.
Hi everyone,
Please read this column by Dr. Helen Ouyang, an ER physician in New York and a professor at Columbia University. The piece is entitled "Stabbed. Kicked. Spit On. Violence in American Hospitals Is Out of Control,” and it appears in The New York Times.
“In a 2022 American College of Emergency Physicians survey of E.R. doctors, 55% said they had been physically assaulted, almost all by patients, with a third of those resulting in injuries. Eighty-five percent had been seriously threatened by patients. The risks can be even higher for E.R. nurses, with over 70 percent reporting they had sustained physical assaults at work.”
—Helen Ouyang, The New York Times.
A short video featuring healthcare workers from Vermont that accompanies the essay is well-worth watching.
I’ve been verbally attacked too many times to count. I am fortunate that I’ve never been physically assaulted. But many of my co-workers have. One co-worker was out for weeks with a broken bone. Another outstanding clinician I work with was hit on a shift recently. I wasn’t there, but when I heard about it, it felt like all of us had been attacked. (Of course, I didn’t have to endure any actual physical injury or emotional damage—but it still hurt. We’re a team.) All I could do was tell them how much I and my coworkers value the contributions they make to our community every day they show up to work. And of course, I know that every time I go to work, my number could come up. It’s less of an if than a when. I try not to think about it and just do my job. But I also know that I shouldn’t have to think about it.
Of course, very few patients ever literally attack hospital staff. But we do get a lot of verbal abuse—mostly mild, but occasionally more substantial.
Please think about this. It’s our job and it’s our honor to care for you. All we are asking for is a safe environment to do this work.
It's not just in the ER. On a recent visit to the hospital lab, I thanked the phlebotomist for masking (few do now), and heard from her a sad tale of how often she has been berated, called "sheep" and worse. But she believes the science, knows she is dealing with patients who are often immunocompromised, often unmasked (sometimes both!), and continues to mask, even with little support from her co-workers. There are now more masks seen on visitors and patients than on staff, despite rising numbers locally (my town's school in western Massachusetts closed last week because so many kids, both in school and at home, had covid).
Viewed from a detached, psychological standpoint, I can say we shouldn't be surprised by what you're reporting here. Patients in ER's are often under significant stress and so become more unreasonable/emotional than they already tend to be. And of course the emotional temperature of our society has risen in the last few years. That said, I had no idea that this was such a serious issue, and my heart goes out to ER docs and nurses, who are already under stress in "normal" work circumstances.