Violence increasing in emergency rooms

August 11, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

Emergency-room nurse Erin Riley suffered bruises, scratches and a chipped tooth last year from trying to pull the clamped jaws of a psychotic patient off the hand of a doctor at a suburban Cleveland hospital.

A second assault just months later was even more upsetting: She had just finished cutting the shirt off a drunken patient and was helping him into his hospital gown when he groped her.

Violence against nurses and other medical professionals appears to be increasing around the country as the number of drug addicts, alcoholics and psychiatric patients showing up at emergency rooms climbs.

Nurses have responded, in part, by seeking tougher criminal penalties for assaults against health-care workers.

Visits to ERs for drug- and alcohol-related incidents climbed from about 1.6 million in 2005 to nearly 2 million in 2008, according to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. From 2006 to 2008, the number of those visits resulting in violence jumped from 16,277 to 21,406, the agency said.

Nurses and experts in mental health and addiction say the problem has been getting worse since then because of the downturn in the economy, as cash-strapped states close state hospitals, cut mental-health jobs, eliminate addiction programs and curtail other services.

The American College of Emergency Physicians has recommended safety measures, including 24-hour security guards, coded ID badges, bulletproof glass and “panic buttons” for medical staff to push.