by Caitlin Shipp

In July 2015, I had been working as a nurse for only nine months. One night began like any other. At the start of my shift, I was told I was getting an admission from the Emergency Department. I gathered a hospital gown and prepared the room before calling down for report. And an hour after my patient arrived on the floor, I became the victim of physical assault.

My patient was a drunken 6-foot tall, 250-pound man. I am none of those things. When asked the admission questions, the man began to answer inappropriately and make sexually explicit comments. I quickly realized the conversation was going nowhere and decided to leave the paperwork for later and check on other patients. I asked him if there was anything he needed before I let him get some sleep, to which he responded he needed to use the bathroom. I helped him stand up, and before I knew it he had grabbed me by my upper arms with both hands and slammed me into the wall. He pinned me there and started punching me. As he reared back to swing again, it threw him off balance and I took that chance to call for help and run away.

Since I was willing to press charges, the police were called and he was arrested on site. I was told he would be taken to jail, but instead he was given a citation and released on the street just outside my hospital. I was left with a strained neck and back, the brand of my assailant in the form of finger-shaped bruises around my arms, and enough anxiety to last a lifetime.

I couldn’t sleep for weeks, and for months after I felt on edge. At home, I found myself having to work up the courage to walk from my car to my front door because I had this intrusive thought that he could be my neighbor.

I found it incredibly upsetting to realize that if that man had attacked me in a park — or a restaurant, or at the bank — that something more would have happened. I would have been fought for and protected afterward. The realization made me seriously consider leaving the profession.

I was able to show up at work, do my assessments, pass my meds, and that’s it. I stopped asking my patients about their lives; honestly, I barely spoke to them at all. One day, a patient refused a pill and I had to run to another room to breathe and gather myself because my body perceived a much greater conflict than just “I don’t want my metoprolol tonight.” I treated all of my patients with a new distance and a level of coldness because suddenly these people weren’t sick — they were a threat. I felt like a horrible person and a horrible nurse, but I couldn’t muster the strength to change it. I couldn’t do the one thing that is at the very center of our profession: I no longer had the energy to care.

We have a fantastic security team at my hospital, and the head of security offered to teach me some new techniques to keep me safe and to escape should I find myself in the situation again — -a chilling thought. Many of these techniques were helpful and I’ve continued to use them. Today, I assess the room as well as the patient; I leave the door open as an escape route and pull the curtain for privacy. However, none of these stop the fact that nurses have to come into very close contact with their patients in order to successfully do their jobs. I have to touch patients to hear their heartbeats and lung sounds.

We are similar to police officers in that we have to put ourselves in vulnerable positions to care for and protect people. The difference is that police are trained to fight back. They’re allowed to fight back. And they’re able to have a barrier between themselves and the aggressor.

Not everyone was as supportive as our head of security. One of the most disturbing things said to me was “Well, that’s part of the job.” I heard this from co-workers and non-co-workers alike, and I was appalled. When I decided to become I nurse, the idea that I was accepting a lifetime of tolerated violence never occurred to me. It was never taught to me in nursing school, and it never showed up in my contract. The reason for this is because it is not part of the job.

The idea that nurses need to accept physical, verbal and sexual abuse is antiquated and we need to educate ourselves and the public about what it is we do and what we actually deal with. Not all family members of patients are supportive and helpful. Not every patient is the sweet 95-year-old grandmother. Patients can be drunks or addicts or jerks, or just have poor coping skills because we take care of people — human beings with their own human qualities.

I’m sharing my story with you because we have to start talking out loud about the reality of the threats we face every day.

I’m willing to bet every nurse has his or her own story of assault in the workplace or knows someone who does, and our silence does not create change. It’s time to say “enough is enough.” We want to feel safe at work. We deserve to feel safe at work.

Caitlin Shipp is a registered nurse and a member of the Montana Nurses Association/AFT.