Workplace Violence in Healthcare: Real Stories & Safety Tips
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Hey guys, welcome back to Friends Anonymous. Today it's me and my husband. I'm back. You're back. I'm back. It's been a moment. I feel like it's been a moment since you've been on. It's been several moments, yeah. It's been several moments. It's been a few months. We just moved. Brief update. We're going to do a full update episode about...

Just so you know, we just moved. So things will be changing if you're watching. It looks a little blank, a little bare, a little boring. It will be changing very soon. But we still have boxes literally right behind the cameras that need to be unboxed. So, yeah, I can't wait till we get some.

Mount Farms. I know. Some mic stands. I never want to move this equipment ever again. I just want it to stay in place. But today's episode, we are talking about workplace violence. It's very relevant. It is very relatable. It happens every single day. Jared and I just left a new workplace violence safety program that is rolling out. It's been in the making for the past one to two years. More on that later. More on that later. I'm very excited, though, because it's the very first time I've ever felt like...

a program is listening to us about the real shit that happens, but we're going to circle back to that. This episode might be a little heavy today. I mean, it's real life. It's what we deal with every single day, but just know, I hear you, see you. We're trying on our end to move the needle a little bit further every day. If you didn't know, now you know. Every hour, a nurse in America is physically assaulted. Not yelled at, not insulted, assaulted.

In fact, nearly three quarters of all workplace assaults happen in healthcare. And the people taking the hits are the one at the bedside, whether that be doctors, nurses, RTs, OTs, PTs, CNAs, etc.,

I am speaking from a nurse's point of view because I am a nurse and that is what I know. So I'm not saying if I say nurse, I mean health care. I mean health care workers. I know that anyone could be physically assaulted or assaulted period in health care. But I'm kind of speaking from a nurse's point of view because I am a nurse. Also, we know that EMS paramedics, they can also deal with this as well, much more than possibly we do.

But again, from a nurse's point of view, the worst part of all of this is we're told what. What could you have done differently? Yeah. Every single time you do the right things, whether it be escalating the situation, going to your manager, going to head or house soup, going to admin of some sort. We all have been told, well, what could you have done better? Where the hospital system flips it on you and makes it a you problem. When in reality, I don't think they're giving us the resources to

for real life scenarios. Instead, what they typically do is give us book life scenarios. In a perfect world, what would this look like? And that's just not real. So today we're going to be talking about real things that happen. So if you're not a healthcare worker, please stay tuned, tune in and listen to this because I've realized talking to non-healthcare workers, when I tell them the reality of our job, they are shocked.

Because they would never treat their nurse, doctor, RT, OT, PT, whoever like this. But the fact is the general public is not always the same. It was shocking whenever I first heard all those statistics, especially where healthcare workers are five times more likely to experience violence than any other profession. Than any other industry. We're five times more likely. That's from OSHA.

So five times more likely to experience workplace violence than any other industry. That's insane. I mean, if that's not screaming something is wrong, something has to change. I don't know what is, but that's more of what we're getting into. Has anything ever happened to you? Has anything ever happened to you where you're like, you needed to call security? Maybe not since you're a man. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a combination of being a male nurse and a little bit

bigger than average and working in the ICU, you know, maybe down in the ER. I know the guys down there deal with all kinds of stuff. It doesn't come up as much in the ICU, but I've had like, you know, nails dug into me. I had my finger bent back from a patient that agreed to a COVID test, but withdrew consent halfway through in a very violent way. Yeah.

But yeah, I don't see near as much as I think generally the patients that are going to do that type of thing, they feel more emboldened whenever it's more opportunistic, whenever they have maybe a smaller nurse or somebody who looks scared or, you know, they're uncomfortable with the situation already. They kind of zero in on that person. And, you know, even whenever they're

Yeah.

I do think a common misconception is that violence doesn't happen anywhere else in the hospital but the ER. It's definitely highest in the ER because they're dealing with you right whenever people come in and log with out in the field like EMS. You know, after talking to more paramedics and EMS workers, I did not realize just how much, you know, they go into people's homes where they're kind of trapped.

in a scenario like they could be trapped in their home where these people call 911 for help. 911 comes to help. And then they're like aggressive towards people who are trying to help them. And it could be they could totally have psych issues, but sometimes they don't. And I think that's what some people don't understand. Sometimes we're just dealing with someone who has some type of

power trip or like control issue where they don't feel like they're controlling the situation. So they take it out on us. And also, even if they do have a psych issue, we should not be having to bear the brunt of their assaults, of their violence. We should. And I'm not saying it's all on them either. There's this is a whole systemic issue of there's not enough funding or resources and mental health to begin with.

But then once again, who's bearing the brunt of it? The healthcare workers. I think that's why this episode is going to be important, especially what we're going to get into. Even rudimentary self-defense for healthcare staff because you're at this weird impasse where, yes, some of the patients that perpetrate violence have mental health issues and, you know,

responsibility can't be laid completely at their feet, but that doesn't stop that it's still happening and the nurses are still getting hurt. So we can't just say, oh yeah, we're kind of stuck. You know, we don't, there's nothing we can do. There is something we can develop some sort of self-defense to where we can at least protect ourselves while protecting the patients. And I think that's kind of where things have been lacking. A lot of these self-defense programs that are taught in hospitals are

can cause harm to the patients while you're trying to protect yourself. And if there's a better outcome where nobody gets hurt and everybody's protected, that's definitely something we should be interested in. Right. I'm just going to jump into some statistics here. So Jared already mentioned healthcare workers experience workplace violence at five times the rate of other industries. That's straight from OSHA.

Between 2020 and 2022, over 44% of nurses reported physical violence and or 66% verbal abuse. I mean, yeah, if you're not being hit, you're definitely being screamed at, called profanities. I've been spit on, which is the highest version of assault in my opinion. I'm like, that is, you just think I am beneath you to spit on me? And it

It's just once again, this culture of, well, don't get in their face. I have to sometimes. Oh, well, your finger got bit. Don't put your fingers in their mouth. I have to sometimes. There are some situations where it's inevitable. I'm trying to help them. And then they turn on you, which again, we're going to get into something a little bit down the road of what we just got certified in, which is really exciting. But I think, you know, we've got to define what workplace violence is

At the beginning, it is verbal threats. It is physical assault. It is sexual harassment. It is anything in between those. And we did not necessarily sign up for this. You know, think about nursing school. Did they teach us any of this? Right. Yeah. Yeah. And we I mean, when you go into nursing, you understand that you're meeting a lot of these people on the worst day of their life. Yeah. And so we I think a lot of us take that mindset into it.

you know, to a certain extent where you give them a lot of grace and you really work on having a lot of patience because, you know, if you can think back to the worst day you've ever had, you probably weren't just the most pleasant person to deal with. So a certain extent we, I fully understand and I try my best to,

to be patient and find workarounds that are beneficial for the patient or the person asking or the family member, but that can't carry into actual violence. And even verbal abuse to a certain extent, there has to be a point where we start to say, okay, this is too much. This is not what we signed up for as caregivers. And so solutions are coming, it sounds like. Yes.

Also, the Emergency Nurses Association reports that one in four ER nurses have been physically assaulted on the job. To me, that's low. Reports that I would guess it's one in two. If I, you know, I know that I don't have the stats for that, but if you talk to any ER nurse, you know, they've been physically assaulted. OSHA states that 75 percent, we've already said this, but 75 percent of workplace assaults occur in health care.

You know, I think one that comes to me with you were saying, like, it doesn't happen as often in ICU as the ER, but it happens. And typically it's family that we're calling security on or patients, you know, we're trying to lower sedation on. A lot of times, you know, we want sedation off as quick as possible, but these people don't know where they're at or they do and they don't want to be there or they don't want you touching them, etc.,

they get really violent. One story that comes to mind for me, I was a new grad. I had a patient that was NPO. It was these two adult children's father. That was the patient. And I'd been in there multiple times where they were either putting water in the patient's mouth or food. And I had said multiple times, this patient cannot have anything. He's literally here for aspiration pneumonia. That's not really getting through one of the sons understood. The other one did not. And

I came in there at one point. He had some smashed up banana and was feeding him again. And I said, you need to step away from the patient. I need someone to call security for me because this is now the third or fourth time I've told you, are you trying to kill your father? Because if you're not a health care worker, I understand where the emotion is that you think your loved one is starving. They are not. There are rules and regulations as to why we're doing things. Someone not eating, they're not going to starve in 12 hours. Promise you that.

Not to mention, this patient was on two feet. There was a whole lot of things happening, but I needed this person removed. I said, you are now interfering with patient care. I've told you multiple times, it's time for you to leave. We called security. This man tried to come tower over me. I'm six foot tall, by the way, so he's tall too, towering over me. And

come to find out that security wouldn't do anything. They couldn't do anything. And I'm not shitting on security. I am actually a very big fan of security and hospital systems. But a lot of times we're not taught, we're not communicated as to what their job is.

Sometimes there are hands-off security where they can't... What's the fucking point of hands-off security? When I call you, I need somebody to get this person out of here. But this was a situation where security didn't feel like they needed to do much. And so it kept escalating until I got management involved, house soup involved, and then security finally escorted them out. But they had their own set of rules. And so I'm not shitting on them. It's just, again, a systemic...

Yeah. And just like we have an escalation curve, they have one as well. Right. And like you said, there's all kinds of there's hands off security. There's there's security, but they they can't like hold people against their will or they can't restrain. Thank you. They can't restrain people. There's some security that are like licensed officers and they can do it all. So it's you know, it all depends on where you're at. If you're in a city, more rural places, there's there's several different types. Right. Right.

But if something has happened to you, most likely if you've reported it, you go up the chain of command, you tell so-and-so, and eventually someone says to you, you know, they either gaslight you, nothing changes, or you could be in fear of retaliation.

That's why nurses might not report these things is because your workplace sometimes doesn't give a fuck, which is so hard to hear. But it's the truth. They might say things like, well, it's part of the job. You signed up for this.

Or what could you have done better? We all know that one. But it's part of the job is not true. It's not true in any way, shape or form. In nursing school, we are not taught self-defense. In nursing school, we are not given a bulletproof vest. We are not given a lot of these. Like if this was expected of us, we would have resources available to protect ourselves. But we don't.

And we always use the idea of, well, if this happened out on the street to a cop, it would be much different for this individual. But since it's happening in the four walls of a hospital...

we don't get the same treatment and it's not fair. It feels like it's being normalized and there's an emotional toll that happens with that. It causes further burnout. One of the top reasons that nurses leave bedside is not feeling heard, validated, understood, appreciated. And people, when they first see that, they're like, oh, you didn't get a thank you today. It's not that. It's deeper than that. We

We are being hit. We are being assaulted. We're being sexually assaulted. That's a whole nother topic I could go on for a whole episode. And nothing happens to these individuals. And then we're taught we're gaslit that, well, you're it's your issue, not ours. A lot of times actively discouraged from pressing charges. How many times has a nurse pressed charges and either their administration or a cop told them you might as well not. You might as well drop it.

And that's just not right either. We need to set an example. Unfortunately, some people have to be the guinea pigs for this and set an example. There's a nurse in North Carolina who was jumped on. She was an ER nurse. She was trying to take care of the psych patient that sounds like to be a frequent flyer. Psych patient was not happy, jumped off of her gurney onto the nurse and broke her leg.

Yeah, that's that's insane. Like there's no there's no way you can you can seriously say you signed up for that. That's that's crazy. You should never sign up for I don't care if it's a psych patient. I don't care if it's a psych patient. That doesn't mean two things can be true at once. That patient needs help.

But you don't get to assault your nurses while getting the help. We need something in place. We need to go back in time. We don't have a time machine, but we need to go back in time or start now. And it will take decades to fix this stuff. Yeah, I mean, you have to at some point.

prioritize the safety of your staff or that just becomes a cancer that eats away at morale, at hospital culture. And eventually you have people that either don't care about their jobs or they have zero loyalty to the job and your turnover is going to be massive. Yeah. Which is another top cost for a hospital. Extremely top cost for a hospital.

On this last seminar that we went to, we're going to talk about a little bit later. They said at their university last they checked, which was like 2018, the cost to turn over a nurse or to hire a new nurse was $150,000. Insane. Yeah. And think of your turnover rate. Think of how many of your nurses leave and each new nurse that comes in an average of 100,000, we'll say 100,000. Yeah. That's how much it costs.

How many new nurses are starting every single day? Yeah. And then they're leaving new nurses, new grad nurses. There was a new study. I'd have to find it to link it.

Within the last two years, new grads are leaving within one year. Bedside. Leaving bedside completely within one year. I saw something about that. The attrition rate is the worst. It's the worst it's ever been. And so once again, we're trying to figure out, oh, well, what could we know? What could you do better? Administration. How about you take accountability for this shit that's happening in your hospital? And there's not just one way to fix this. I believe personally a perfect hospital to me would have hands on security.

would have metal detectors, would have panic buttons, and would have the self-defense program that we have been taught this past week. All of it. Not one of it. All of it. Because you never know what's about to come through those doors. Another tragic thing that happened out in the field and a paramedic was stabbed by a patient in the ambulance. He ended up dying.

So this is real life stuff. You haven't heard of Nurse Leela. I did a whole podcast with her daughter, Cindy. You can go back and find it just a few episodes ago. Nurse Leela was a 67-year-old nurse in Florida at an HCA hospital. And that hospital is trying to, I don't know the legal terms here, but trying to place a gag order on them.

to prevent them from speaking out about this incident, trying to pretend it's a one-time incident. No. And I love her family and her daughter are not stopping. They're not shutting their mouth because everyone needs to know what happened to her. And if you don't know, a brief on it, go listen to the whole episode. But briefly, a psych patient attacked her so brutally that

She almost lost her eyesight. She's been in the ICU. She's had several surgeries. She luckily has lived. During the attack, two nurses passed out after seeing how awful it was. It was awful. And yet the system is turning around and saying, shh.

We don't want you to speak about this. How about you shut the fuck up? How about you take some accountability? I think a lot. I know that I know legally, I know business wise why they don't take accountability. It's because you're going to owe this person a lot of money. It would be you owe this person a lot of money and then you gain the respect of your staff. Thank you for saying, I am so sorry this happened. It won't happen again. And this is how we're going to change it. But they didn't do that because two weeks after her assault, another nurse on the same exact floor was assaulted.

Yeah. It's insane. Yeah. And there's a lot of I think these hospitals miss the mark on they go with just hard numbers cost this much for a nurse. They're paid this much per hour. They're expendable. Yeah. The lawsuit costs X amount of dollars, but they don't take into account the intangibles from providing adequate self-defense metal detectors. Peace of mind. Yeah.

Yes.

feeling like administration doesn't care. You know, it's things like this. It's all these more intangible things that you could directly impact by, you know,

Caring for your nurses and showing that you care for your nurses, showing with your action that you care, not not with your bullshit words, not hero banners. Please take down the hero banners. We all think it's a joke at this point because everyone has forgotten about us since COVID. COVID, we were heroes. COVID, we were we were on every fucking news outlet. Oh, Lululemon, 20 percent. No, not anymore, by the way. Like all these people.

they say, oh, it's done. Just take that out now. No, we're still doing this every single day for you. It's like, and I get so fired up about this because I'm like, we are the largest workforce in America, healthcare workers. Then beyond that, nurses. And you still are like,

Shut your mouth over there. We don't want to talk. We don't want to scare the public. Yes, we do. Do you know what's happening in these walls? Yes, we do want to scare you. You will go to prison. That's what needs to happen. If you assault your nurse, there will be charges. If you assault your nurse, there will be consequences. Yes, we want you to be a little bit scared coming in here. Do not assault us. Moving on to the next piece of information that just makes me want to scream is in 2024, this is one hospital.

One hospital, not one system, one hospital's information. In 2024, they had 195 reported assaults. Of those 195 reported assaults, there were 73 injuries, reported injuries. Keep that in mind. These are the ones that went to workers' comp.

So generally serious injuries. I can't tell you how many times I've had a patient just like kick me, like kick me in the stomach. I'm like, well, that hurt. But I wasn't seriously injured. So I just went on about my day. Sure. So there's countless numbers of these happening. But these are serious injuries that got reported and filed workman's comp. Yes. The average cost per injury was $75,000 on the hospital. Yeah.

The average cost of the hospital to pay for each of these injuries through workman's comp was $75,000, equaling $5.5 million that they spent at one hospital for 73 reported injuries.

That's insane. And it doesn't matter how big your hospital system is. You could probably deal with an extra $5.5 million. Yeah. I mean, that's just such a huge cost. And that's one hospital reported injuries. One hospital. Uno. And that first number, you're talking that's more than every other day there's an assault. Yeah. That's insane. Again, reported assaults. Yeah.

There are definitely assaults every single day. Yeah. If that's reported. Since training, so this is another, we're about to get into what we learned this past week. For five days, we went and got certified to be an instructor, essentially, for something called Gracie Medical Defense. If you've heard of the Gracie family, they are, you'll have to help me here. I did not know much about jujitsu or MMA. They are royalty, basically.

within that sector. Neither one of us knew anything about that until that was our first experience with any type of jiu-jitsu or any martial art at all. Yeah. But yeah, the Gracie family, if you're

at all involved with MMA. You probably know their name. They're the ones that brought the art to the U.S., popularized it. I think they either made or heavily influenced the UFC. So, you know, it's a household name, been known for a long time to produce, you

the best content whenever it comes to learning jujitsu. Self-defense. So the reason this is so cool, though, was an ER nurse named Matt

He had been taking jujitsu classes and he saw years ago, there's got to be a way to influence our workplace safety while using jujitsu. And I know what you're thinking. Isn't that violent? Isn't MMA violent? Can be. But jujitsu based principles are not violent at all. Yeah. I didn't know this until this past week, but jujitsu translates to the gentle way. Yeah. And so everything they have, it's about control. You know, you're not...

enacting violence on the other person, you're redirecting violence. Yes. So this ER nurse, Matt, he reached out to one of the Gracie brothers and was like, hey, we have to utilize this in health care. It's an issue. Henner, Henner Gracie, didn't really know much about the health care issues because hospitals love to keep it quiet. They

They will do anything but take accountability, especially publicly. So he didn't know just how bad it was. A year went on. So that sees him again in a year. And he's like, hey, man, I'm still wanting to talk to you about using making some type of system that helps health care workers while using jujitsu based principles. So he was like, all right, let's sit down and talk.

Yeah.

please send them my way. The link will be in the description because we need to get this out to every hospital. If you have had CPI in the past, Moab, Evade, it is not like those. Okay. You're not going to be snoring through class knowing that all those little things that they tell you to do are not even applicable. Like don't put yourself between the patient and a wall. Oh, but the computer and the scanner is where in the corner of the room between the patient and the wall. Like they don't, they don't set us up for success. This actually,

actually changed. Like I have a fire in me again, like, oh, we all need to know this because over the last week we learned how to get out of a chokehold with your, with your stethoscope. We learned how to get out of someone pulling your hair. We learned how to get out of someone grabbing you, someone pulling you down with your scrubs, someone not letting go, someone biting you. We learned how to get out of every single one of the scenarios that we go through on a daily basis.

And if not get out it they also show you some grappling and how to safely clinch with the person because you know one of the one of the big ideas that nobody has really talked about and I didn't know CPI and evade and all these I don't know them super well being in the ICU we usually get very minimal training in self-defense which is a whole other issue but

there were practitioners and instructors, decades-long instructors, of these other methodologies.

in this class that we took. Their head of security at X hospital, I think there was a chief of staff there. So these are higher ups, the people that deal with this stuff directly. And they came with a lot of the same stories. Hey, I'm taught this stuff. I teach it to other people and I have guilt while I'm teaching it because I know it doesn't work. And they even did it like whenever Henner was showing some of the strategies and the different moves,

they would bring up some of these instructors and say, okay, what does CPI teach you to do? And they would say and show what they were supposed to do. And there was some situations where they were like, okay, so you got here and you're stuck at this point. It's not going any further. What does CPI teach you? And they were like, well, they teach us to gouge their eyes.

I'm like, Jesus. It's so violent. Yeah, because the ideal resolution of these violent encounters is not only the safety of the nurse, but a major bonus would be the safety of the patient. Absolutely. Because, you know, it's even especially in situations where they're not in their right mind, you know, you don't want...

them to get hurt badly or their eyes gouged out. What on earth? So we need a better solution that works for both parties. And I think that we've found it here. We have found it here. I mean, they even have something called the safe wrap, where you can safely restrain a patient with their body. And before you come for me, well, restraints, no. Restraints are necessary in so many scenarios. They're not fun. Nobody likes to

Yeah. Yeah.

Two, to safely wrap up a human and they are not hurting. They can breathe. Nothing bad happens to them. Yeah. And any if you've been in a situation where you're trying to control a single patient and five staff flood into the room, you're

it typically everybody grabs a limb and you pull it down over the side of the bed to to get control of it. And then you run into all kinds of other torn ligaments, breaking joint issues, broken bones, all kinds of stuff. And it's extremely uncomfortable for the patient. So they're going to be freaking out that much more. And then people they'll slip a leg out and then you get

kicked because you're right in the red zone, which is something that they... The care zone is the red zone? Yeah, something they talk about where you're just right at the most powerful distance for them, for them to kick you or to punch you. But the other situation, they usually pin all the limbs down, causing injury. And then the next solution is to dogpile them. And then you're restricting their breathing and you're getting into some very serious issues with

patients that are there because they're already compromised. Yes, they're vulnerable. They're vulnerable. It's a vulnerable population no matter why they're there. And so they have come up with a solution, which is so freaking cool. Like it makes me excited to be in health care again where I'm like, oh, my God, someone was listening to us and they decided to make a program for us that actually helps us and the patient and keeps us both safe. I love that. Yeah. And we were both put in this safe rep restraint position several times while we were learning it all week.

It's non-restrictive. You're being restrained with your own arms, so there's no risk of choking. There's no joint locks. There's no pressure points. There's nothing like that. It feels, for being restrained, it feels actually relatively comfortable. Yeah, it's not. I could take a nap if I really wanted to. Yeah, it's not bad at all. And

The issue here is that it does take a little bit of know-how, a little bit of learning and continued practice. Yes. Which is a big thing. They're going to have to change the culture in the hospital. Yes. But that's that's we're at the starting point of that. We are changing the culture to it's not.

It's not if it's when, when will you be attacked? Because you will. And that's what they need to start telling all these new grads. It's not if it's when. So you need to be protected and you need to know how to protect yourself. The one who controls the distance controls the damage. And that's the whole point of this whole thing. That's their quote, not mine. Wish it was mine. And one of the big takeaways that I had that I thought was

Super clever and makes a ton of sense, but it never once crossed my mind because it's a little bit counterintuitive for the layman like myself. I've never been in any type of combat at all. The safest place you can be is two arm lengths or more away, out of reach essentially. That's obviously the safest place you can be. But whenever you're giving care and you're in that danger zone within, you know, you're right at the end, the extension of their punch or the extension of their kick, you're

The next safest place you can be is directly against their body because your punches have no power. You can't kick. So, you know, if you're either all the way out or all the way in, those are the two green zones that they talk about. Yes. And that's what they teach with this program. Yes. And that was something that I, you know, whenever they say it, you're like, oh, yeah, it's so obvious. Yeah. Especially whenever you learn how to clinch and get in there and safely keep yourself in that inner space.

green zone, it makes a ton of sense. Makes complete sense. The reason we tell you all that as well is because going back on the hospital report of the 195 reported assaults and 73 injuries, we're

Since being trained with GMD, Gracie Medical Defense, there have been zero incidents. Violence has been reduced by 80%. There is increased autonomy and decreased resources, meaning you're saving money and you're saving burnout. That's insane to me. And, you know, the numbers sound outstanding, and they are, but there's more to it than that. I think the biggest thing here, and my main thought being a healthcare professional, is that

you're not just giving them the raw skills of how to protect themselves. You're giving them confidence and you're giving them peace of mind. A lot of these

interactions in the hospital escalate unnecessarily because the nurse is scared. There's this giant person in the room. They have no clue how to defend themselves. You know, they're in a bad position, maybe against a wall or something like that. So obviously it's going to escalate because you're like, I'm getting out of here. I'm going home tonight. Yeah, this is not, you know, I'm not getting stuck here. And so they'll escalate way more than is necessary just out of fear. And

having this type of training, it gives you a quiet confidence where you can set boundaries and you can maintain your boundaries and not have that so much flight in your fight or flight response. Yeah, that's so true. I mean, I think back to times when I've escalated a situation either with my tone of voice, my body language, et cetera, because I'm scared of what this patient or family is about to do to me. And now that I have this training, I'm like, try me. You

You know what I mean? I will keep my tone level. I will talk with you as...

level as I can until you get into a distance that I fear for my life now. Okay, time to go. And it's not, it's not, by the way, it's not time to go like, I'm fighting this person. I am saving myself right now and you. Yeah, they're not. I don't mean like, it's time to go. Let's, let's catch me outside. I mean, okay, it's time to go with my training that I just fucking learned. Yeah, they're not out here teaching you how to be Conor McGregor. No. Yeah, they're teaching you. This is all taught where you have

for a hospital setting where, where, or a clinical setting, there's people around, there's security within a few minutes. You know, it's, it's taught to control a situation long enough for help to come. And then they also teach things where, when you have a partner and if both of you understand GMD, it opens up the world to what you can do. It's so cool. It's, it's, it's,

This is the long term solution. Absolutely. In my in my head, along with the other things, the metal detectors, the panic buttons, all the things we need, all of them, because you never know. I was going to also say 70 percent of health care workers that are injured leave after injury.

So going back to that retention, going back to the money, it takes $100,000 to $150,000 for each new nurse. After injury, 70% leave. Think of how, and going back to the stats here, there have been zero incidents and violence was reduced by 80%. So you could reduce, possibly, you could reduce your nurses leaving by 80%.

That's so much money. Yeah. Why are these hospitals... When they hear these numbers, if you still say no, then you fucking hate us. Because how do you say no to this? Yeah. And I mean, even a full implementation of a program like this is a fraction of the cost of a single lawsuit or, you know, one of these 70 workman's comp claims. Absolutely. So it's... It just...

Seems like a no-brainer to me, but convincing admin is a whole other thing because a lot of them hear it and they're like, I don't want them to learn how to fight. Are you kidding me? I don't want my nurses to know how to fight. That's crazy. It's not fighting. It's not fighting. That's the thing. It's self-defense. Yes. And it's self-defense without violence. Yes, exactly.

Control. It's controlling the situation. Yeah. In a humane way where you're not hurting patients. And it's slow. You can do these things in slow motion and they still work. Yeah. And that's kind of where I'm so excited for this to get out there. And that's why I was like, oh, we have to make a podcast episode immediately about this. And it was amazing how many in this training, all walks of life. Yes. Men, women. There was 30 year olds. There was 70 year olds. Everybody was able to do this stuff. And it was.

It wasn't just nurses. There were paramedics there. There was security there. There were admin there. There was also a trauma surgeon, a trauma surgeon there. There were all walks of health care can do this. That's so exciting. Yeah, you can do this even if you're because that was our biggest questions. What about the frail older people that are still in health care? Oh, well, they pulled out the frailer, not frail, but, you know, older people that come in. OK, let's see you do it. And they could do it. Yeah. Are you kidding me? This is awesome.

I was also going to read these other stats because I'm like, I think everyone needs to know this. Many hospitals don't have adequate safety policies, reporting protocols or security presence, which we already know if you work in health care. Only 30 percent of hospitals have a formal system in place for addressing violence. 30 percent. I wish I was shocked. I know. I'm not shocked, but I'm annoyed. In 2023, over 70 percent of nurses said they felt unsupported by leadership after being attacked.

Absolutely.

that could come from that is self-incrimination. So what could you have done better is clear self. It's like when you get pulled over and they say, do you know why I pulled you over? They want you to self-incriminate. Right. So there's just no point in that. They're not looking out for you. HR is not looking out for you. They're not your friend. I'm not saying they're a boogeyman out to get you, but I'm saying HR exists for the hospital. They don't exist for you. And, you know, a whole other conversation for another podcast would be,

personal malpractice and liability insurance. Right. You know, that's something that should be looked into because these hospitals are not... Every time we've seen the rubber meet the road, the nurse got hung out to dry. And there are also lack of legal protections in some states. Very few states have laws that

That make assaulting a nurse a felony. It's becoming more normal. But even in those states with the even in those states that have felonies against assaulting nurses, so many of those cases get dropped. Yeah.

That's the problem. If someone's like, well, in my state, it's actually a felony. If the case goes through, how many of those get dropped? I don't have the numbers on it. I would love to know. And if there's a mental health aspect or a mental health crisis, it muddies the waters instantly. And you get into this weird spot. And a lot of times you're encouraged to just drop it. Yeah. It's just easier for everyone if you would. Yeah. Which is not true.

Let's see, going on, moving on, moving on. Hospitals can implement de-escalation training. They tell us all the time, like, we'll de-escalate the situation. We try, obviously. The very first thing we try to do is de-escalate with our voice, with our body language, with our tone. We want them to know we are on their side. We're here to help you. But I can't help you if you don't want to help you. Yeah. And it blows my mind that

We get... Talk to like we're children? Well, we get a handful, like a, you know, 25-minute module on verbal de-escalation when that is a huge chunk of our job, 30%. You know, verbal de-escalation. And we had some of this naturally because we waited tables and the crossovers are a little bit crazy. But...

It's crazy that there's no formal, in-depth, high-quality training on de-escalation and just understanding why they're upset, having some empathy, some real tactics on how to de-escalate. You don't see that. You see very high-level, we do it because we have to, Jayco, module-type stuff. Right. Which is...

I would say like you, Jared has said this to me so much. The biggest piece of our job is actually soft skills.

So we call them soft skills where you know how to, if you don't even believe it, you know how to imitate that you understand this person. You can mirror, you can bring yourself down to their level that they feel seen, heard, validated. That's a majority of our job. Most of the time when I have someone upset and I said, how can I help you? What can I do to actually help you get through this? Oh my God, I don't know, but thanks for listening. They really do sometimes just need someone to listen to them, which is understandable. Mm-hmm.

But on the flip side, you don't get justifications for harming us in any way, shape or form. Like I said before, I think panic buttons, more security presence. I think that's necessary. I don't care that there's a sign on the wall that says, don't harm our nurses. We don't tolerate it. We don't tolerate it. Well, you do. You have a fucking sign. Yes, you do. And then I also encourage unionization. I'm going to have another episode, I think, before or after this episode.

There will be I'm interviewing someone named Kylie. She's a union rep. And we're going to learn all about how you can unionize because I'm destigmatizing unions as well. Being from Oklahoma, that's a whole nother episode. But learning that unions are not bad, guys, they're not bad. They're great for employees. And what are you? An employee? Yeah, I think a lot of a lot of the anti-union rhetoric is.

is sticky because people don't really know what unions are or exactly what they do. They don't, they don't, the finer points are misunderstood. So that'd be an interesting one in the future. Yeah. So in summary, you guys, workplace violence is not a part of our job. We did not sign up for this. We should all be advocating with and for each other.

If you guys can get your hospitals, any part of their management or somebody who knows somebody, head of security or head of workplace safety protocols,

Send them my way because I promise you this is going to change the culture of health care. Showing your coworkers, one, that there is a way to safely handle these aggressive patients and showing the patients we have a way to safely handle you when you escalate because it's not if it's when. Every time it's when. It will happen. Some people are very unhinged and some people have psych issues.

Yeah.

But we've been in talks with Henner and the entire team at Gracie Medical Defense, and you're going to be hearing a lot more about it. We just wanted to get it out there for you guys and let you know. And for you to start working on the higher ups at your facility, that there are answers and there are good solutions to this. We don't just have to say, yeah, it just kind of happens. Yeah. And for their benefit, it saves them money. Because what do we know about them? They like money. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Saves them money. That's really all I have for you guys. I want to tell you, though, if you have a workplace violence story of your own or someone close to you, please feel free to email it to frenemas at scrubhacks.com. I love reading your guys' stories on here as well and just showing that it happens everywhere. I'll keep it anonymous for you. Please make sure you like, subscribe, follow my podcast because it helps

push it out to other people who are like you listening to something like this. It's a very small podcast. It's just me, my husband, my assistant, Ariel, and my editor. So it's just us four. I'm doing this all on my own. And it really, really helps when you guys share anything about Friends Anonymous.

That's all I have for you guys. Make sure you check out the description. I should have a code or link sending you to Gracie Medical just to help with the ins and outs of it all, the information aspect of what it is if you need it further. But that's all we have for you today. Yeah. Thanks, guys. Thanks for listening. Bye.