The nurse, Lateefat Ayodeji-Coker, said the attack would not have been possible if hospital officials had installed security barriers at nursing stations, a measure the staff has been urging for years. “It could have been prevented,” she said.

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Mark J. Chastang, the hospital’s chief executive, said in an interview that plans to fortify the nurses’ stations were underway before the attack occurred and that the improvements should be complete within 120 days. “We’re very sorry it happened,” he said of the assault.

Once the site of a sprawling 19th-century psychiatric hospital, St. Elizabeths today is a 292-bed hospital for the mentally ill run by the D.C. Department of Behavioral Health. More than half its patients are criminal defendants, including some awaiting evaluations for competency to stand trial and others found not guilty by reason of insanity.

The hospital has had a recent troubled history. It was not until several years ago that the District emerged from a period of federal oversight that resulted from a lawsuit brought in the 1970s by St. Elizabeths patients. In early 2016 Chastang’s predecessor, James Kyle, left after just a month on the job, dogged by questions from D.C. lawmakers and mental-health advocates over whether his qualifications were adequate.

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D.C. Council member and Health Committee Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D-Ward 7) said he has “a lot of confidence” in Chastang, who led the now-closed D.C. General Hospital from 1990 to 1994.

Gray said that it was clear that improvements to the nurses’ stations should have been made some time ago but that he trusted that the new safety measures would soon be in place, as Chastang had promised. He said he would also follow up on the progress of the renovations at a budget hearing in April.

Ayodeji-Coker said she was at the nurses’ station shortly before 7 p.m. on Jan. 13 when her assailant — whom she identified as a man in his 20s facing criminal charges — broke loose from a bed on which his arms and legs had been restrained. She said he leaped over the nurses’ desk, picked up a telephone and struck her with it repeatedly.

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When he turned from her and began hitting a computer with the phone, Ayodeji-Coker fled to another room and called for help. Two security officers, who had not been present in the unit during the assault, appeared and subdued the patient, she said.

Ayodeji-Coker said that the man had had violent altercations with other patients in the past but that she was not expecting him to attack her. “It’s something I never thought in a million years would happen to me,” she said, adding that the episode left her “traumatized, violated, scared.” She said she was unsure whether she would return to work at St. Elizabeths.

Wala Blegay, staff attorney at the D.C. Nurses Association, said the union and its nurses have for at least several years been urging hospital managers to fortify the nurses’ stations, such as with plexiglass barriers often used to protect staffers in other hospitals with violent patients. She said they have also requested that at least one security officer be present at all times in each of the hospital’s 11 units.

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Chastang, who was appointed by Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) in 2016, said that since his arrival he has recognized that the walls of the nurses’ stations needed to be extended. They are about 3½ feet high, he said, and will soon be mounted with plexiglass that will reach to within 18 inches of the ceiling.

He said it had taken more than two years before those renovations could begin because of the complicated logistics of finding a qualified contractor and relocating patients during construction, and because he sought extensive input from hospital employees on the design of the new barriers.

“It took a little longer because we wanted to pay attention to the detail,” he said.

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Chastang said that the hospital usually has six to eight security officers working but that the exact number varies according to how many beds are filled on a given day.

He said he had put in place dozens of initiatives to increase safety at the hospital, including improvements to equipment and new staff training programs.