Patient-on-patient, patient-on-staff violence rising in Canadian hospitals

Visiting the hospital can bring up a range of emotions. Visiting a sick relative, you might feel sad or frightened. Meeting a newly born relative or a patient who has emerged from successful surgery can be elating. But neither patients nor visitors should feel afraid of violence or physical harm when they enter a Canadian hospital. Unfortunately, instances of violence against both patients and staff are becoming increasingly common in Canada.

In a recent example, Gilbert Masson, who is in the last weeks of his life, was punched in the face by a fellow patient at Foothills Hospital in Calgary. Police investigated the incident, but declined to lay charges against the attacker, who remained on the same floor as Masson. Donna Hengerer, Masson’s daughter, spoke to the CBC about the incident.

Patient-on-patient

Credit: Foothills Medical Centre, Calgary, AB, courtesy GFDL/Wikimedia Commons.

“It’s hard thinking about my dad and not being able to protect him,” she said. “I [was] thinking he’s in the hospital and he’s well taken care of [but] he wasn’t.”

Hengerer says nurses have been attentive to her concerns, and that hospital administration called to apologize, but that her concerns lingered.

“All she could give me were apologies,” Hengerer said. “She couldn’t give me anything else.”

The hospital’s inability to adequately allay Hengerer’s concern for her father’s safety highlight the fact that most staff are simply not equipped to deal with violence in Canada’s hospitals.

Gilbert Masson’s experience is far from isolated, and far from the gravest example of recent violence in Canadian healthcare facilities. In 2012, two patients were killed and two more attacked in the psychiatric ward of Notre Dame Hospital in Montréal. Idelson Guerrier is on trial for the killings.

Also in 2012, an 83-year-old woman at Cowichan District Hospital on Vancouver Island was sexually assaulted by a fellow patient. In this case, the district’s health authority acted by implementing new rules around mixed-gender rooms.

Numbers from Statistics Canada show an increase in many areas of hospital violence, including murder, assault, sexual assault, and others. Additionally, experts believe that hospital violence may go under-reported.

“It may be that this is one of those under-reported areas,” said Gloria Gutman, professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University to the CBC. “It’s one thing to have a patient attacking a nurse or medical personnel – it’s quite another in terms of having to report an incident between patients.”

Even if it’s easier to track violence against hospital personnel, the Statistics Canada numbers don’t differentiate between violence against patients and staff, and an Ontario hospital workers’ union has recently suggested that staff are discouraged from reporting violence.

In early February, CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions claimed that a nurse at the North Bay Regional Health Centre had been fired for speaking out against violence in the workplace.

“The expectation is that being hit is part of the job – where no one is allowed to speak except people who are authorized,” union president Michael Hurley told the CBC.

While the hospital declined to comment, just three days earlier police were called to the health centre when a patient trapped a nurse in his room. He was later charged with forcible confinement.

Canada maintains a first-rate universal healthcare system, and most patients report excellent treatment in hospitals, doctors’ offices, and health centres. However, increased violence in healthcare facilities is cause for concern, and should be addressed as soon as possible by provincial and federal health authorities.

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