8th June ’18 | Twitter @ES_Humour | Contact us |Visit our Website
A Health Care Assistant working in a Mental Health Hospital reveals the FINAL straw that led him to quit the profession that he once loved
As part of our on-going campaign to highlight the frequency and severity of attacks on emergency services and health care staff, the following account was sent into us anonymously via our main website from a Health Care Assistant.
The story gives a behind-the-scenes look at one of the main causes of the assaults unleashed upon members of the emergency services and health care sector (drug abuse)
To read the other ‘Assaulted on Duty’ stories which we have shared, use the search window and type ‘assaulted on duty’.
‘Sorry this is a bit long winded but necessary to tell the story:
I’m currently working for the NHS as a healthcare assistant on a medical unit but previously worked for a different trust on a really busy mental health unit.
One night just after 3am a young man was brought in clearly up to his eyeballs on illicit substances and was being escorted by three police officers.
The officers who were massively thin on the ground due to cut backs had to leave him with us.
The minute they left he immediately turned verbally abusive and threatening towards us as he obviously wanted us to let him go.
The only protection we had (other than our cotton nurses scrubs) was medication but this takes time to draw up and time to work
In the ten to fifteen minutes it took the nurse to draw up the medication the threatening behaviour became more and more aggressive as we obviously wouldn’t let him walk out of the door and it wasn’t long before he charged at us in our cotton scrubs and one day a year of violence and aggression training.
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The kicks and punches rained down on us before we finally managed to get a proper restraint hold on him and medication administered.
The first thing that happened once he had calmed down enough was the form filling to ensure the patient wasn’t injured or felt threatened in any way by us during his onslaught.
On returning to my ward my eye was throbbing so much from the punch to the face I received I genuinely didn’t notice my ear was split open and was bleeding onto my uniform.
The blood was on my right shoulder and the punch to my right eye so couldn’t quite see properly. So I immediately said I wanted to report it as an assault and make a statement.
The officers then had to return to the unit as photographs had to be taken etc.
Two days later I return to work and I’m met by two police officers who basically tell me that because he was “unwell at the time” and was brought there as it was a place of safety for him I would need a capacity statement from the consultant on whether he had capacity at the time of the assault to know what he was doing.
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Basically without the capacity statement the CPS would just throw it out and the consultant couldn’t write the capacity statement because it was three in the morning and he was in bed asleep at the time so obviously wasn’t there to assess his capacity.
So that was that, I was told I could take a private prosecution if I wanted but without the capacity statement I wouldn’t really get anywhere.
After 8 years of putting up with situations like that I threw in the towel and started searching for a new job.
Best thing is the patient was treated for drug induced psychosis and was rereleased 24 hours after coming in’.
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