When healers are attacked

CHICAGO – One woman describes getting slapped and groped on the job. Another was punched in the head repeatedly. A third was bitten so hard that a spike in blood pressure burst an aneurysm in her brain, altering her life forever.

All three are nurses who say their jobs place them in harm's way as the rate of violent incidents at hospitals appears to be growing.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that the rate of hospital employees intentionally injured on the job at the hands of another person is significantly higher than the rate across all private industries.

In 2015, the most recent year for which information is available, there were 8.5 cases of injuries per 10,000 full-time hospital workers, vs. 1.7 cases for all private industries.

The data also show that injury numbers for hospital workers steadily rose from 2011 to 2014 but dropped slightly the following year.

According to an Occupational Safety and Health Administration guide on addressing violence in hospitals, 70 to 74 percent of workplace assaults between 2011 and 2013 happened in health care settings.

Hospitals in the Chicago area have not been immune to such violence.

One of the nurses was sexually assaulted, according to a lawsuit filed in the case, before the inmate was fatally shot by police, authorities said.

Less than a month later at Presence St. Joseph Medical Center in Joliet, a convicted murderer there for treatment used a makeshift weapon to hold a corrections officer and a nursing assistant hostage.

In 2014, a man who had been taken to NorthShore Highland Park Hospital after a car crash was shot and killed by police after taking a gun from his waistband, police reports said.

Experts say that facilities across the country have been affected. In June, a disgruntled doctor opened fire at a New York City hospital, killing another doctor and injuring several other people before taking his own life. In 2015, at a Boston hospital, a man shot and killed the surgeon who had operated on his mother before she died.

While such extreme examples are rarer, many health care workers — especially nurses — say they deal with more minor incidents of physical aggression or verbal abuse on an almost daily basis. Many have stories of intoxicated or delusional patients who spit, claw and hit, or angry family members who threaten lawsuits or even lives.

Yet a movement to change this culture seems to be gaining momentum, with nurses' groups speaking out at protests and on social media and lobbying for legislation that aims to curtail violence against health care workers.

Nurses point out that they're the ones with the most contact with patients and their families, often during times of crisis and intense stress. Heartbreak over a serious diagnosis, anger over a long emergency room wait or even a general disdain for the health care and insurance fields — all can translate into hostility toward nurses, experts say.

"Just going into work is a high-risk endeavor," said Lisa Wolf, director at the Institute for Emergency Nursing Research at the Emergency Nurses Association and a registered nurse who has studied emergency room violence. "You're going to work and people are in some ways feeling like they can kill you."

Nurses' groups generally would like to see more staffing and more training. Other observers say there's no single solution that would work for all hospitals — an industry struggling to do more with fewer resources.

While many states, including Illinois, have enhanced penalties for offenders who attack nurses, there's also a push for federal legislation or an OSHA standard that would regulate hospital staffing levels and install other violence prevention measures.

Trauma nurse Carina Johannessen said her job is somewhat like "being in an abusive relationship."

Nurses get hurt, but they keep going back to work, said Johannessen, 40, who is employed by an RN placement firm and has worked in several Illinois hospitals.

While on a shift at the emergency room at St. Joseph in Joliet, she said, a large male patient punched her in the head five times after he attacked someone else and she tried to intervene.

Johannessen, of Joliet, said she didn't suffer severe injuries and felt she had to finish her shift despite a "raging headache." No one suggested she file a police report, she said, or even go home for the day. And if she had left, she said there wouldn't have been enough nurses to cover the rest of her shift.

"This just seems to be the culture. It's part of the job," Johannessen said. Her "greatest fear" is that violence against nurses will escalate.

Salters, 21 and in jail for alleged car theft, got hold of the officer's handgun, and while the officer ran down the hall and hid, Salters found a nurse in a nearby office, threatened her with the gun and made her remove her clothes, the complaint states. When another nurse entered, he led her to another room, where he held her captive for hours, raping her and beating her at gunpoint, according to the lawsuit.

A SWAT team officer eventually shot and killed Salters. The fatal bullet also struck the nurse in the arm, according to the lawsuit.

Johannessen said the Delnor incident was partly what prompted her to speak out. She said she sometimes struggles to remember why she chose to be a nurse in the first place.

"It is so incredibly rewarding," she said, "but it's sad because it's becoming more and more infrequent that you get the patient who reminds you why you wanted to be a nurse."

ER nurse Valerie Zage said she's been subjected to regular verbal abuse in her 10-year career. "People scream at you, they swear at you. I've been called so many names," she said. "It seems the culture of hospitals in general is, you kind of have to just take it."

The first occurred a few years ago at Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, where Zage said a patient charged at her and slapped her across the face after being denied a pain pill prescription.

Zage was shaken and called police. She said the patient received a minor ordinance violation ticket but never appeared in court, so the matter went unresolved.

More recently, while working at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Zage said an intoxicated patient grabbed her breast while she was setting up an IV. Zage also went to police but said she found it "frustrating" that he too merely received a ticket and was fined $100.

Zage said she's developed a thick skin and focuses on the rewarding parts of her job.

"You go through nursing school and you think, 'Wow, I'm going to help people and save lives,' " she said. "No one really warns you in school that people are as mean and horrible as they're going to be."

Griepentrog said she's uniquely suited for the job, as an act of workplace violence changed her life.

In 2015, Griepentrog was staffing a medical tent at a summer music festival. A young woman came in, topless, saying she had been taking drugs all day and was dehydrated. When Griepentrog tried to start an IV, she said the woman clamped her teeth down hard into the nurse's shoulder and would not let go.

It took the intervention of multiple staff members to eventually wrestle the woman away from her.

Griepentrog was treated for the gash in her shoulder, but a lingering headache led to further testing. Days later, doctors learned the pain from the bite caused her blood pressure to spike, bursting an undiagnosed aneurysm in her brain.

She underwent surgery and spent weeks in the ICU. She was left with short-term memory loss and said she can no longer read more than a sentence at a time.

It might have cost her career, too, had Griepentrog not already had a master's degree and experience teaching. She can no longer treat patients but now works solely as an educator, using computer software that reads aloud to her.

The woman who attacked Griepentrog was eventually convicted of a misdemeanor and sentenced to six months in jail, court records show.

"Now that this has happened, I think, no more. This can't be considered part of our jobs anymore. I think too many of us are being hurt," Griepentrog said.

Alice Johnson, executive director of the Illinois Nurses Association, said it's time for hospitals to make nurses' safety a priority and dedicate resources accordingly.

"Nurses are taking action on their own as part of a grass-roots efforts to address this issue," she said.

Adequate staffing is one key way to improve hospital safety, she said.

Pam Cipriano, American Nurses Association president, said mandatory staff training and better record-keeping should be done at all hospitals — whether voluntary or through federal legislation.