Shownotes Transcript
Welcome back to Friends Anonymous. My name is Lindsay. I'm your host. And this week we have a little bit of a different episode. Trigger warning for this episode. This episode contains sensitive content regarding violence in the healthcare workplace. Listener discretion is advised as we will be discussing a vicious attack on a nurse at HCA Florida Palms West Hospital.
Before we get into it as well, I want to go over some statistics of healthcare violence. Healthcare workers are five times more likely to experience workplace violence than employees in any other sectors. They account for 73% of all non-fatal workplace injuries due to violence.
A survey by National Nurses United found that 81.6% of nurses experienced at least one type of workplace violence in the past year. Nearly half, 45.5%, reported an increase in such incidents compared to the previous year. Types of violence are verbal threats, 67.8%, physical threats, 38.7%, and being pinched or scratched is 37.3%.
In 2018, a survey of over 3,500 emergency room doctors revealed that 47% had been assaulted, with patients being 97% of cases.
I want to give a brief overview of what we'll be talking about today. On February 18th, 2025, Leela, a 67-year-old nurse working at HCA Palms West Hospital in Loxahatchee, Florida, was brutally attacked by 33-year-old Stephen Scantleberry. Stephen essentially broke every bone in Leela's face, and she was likely to lose both of her eyes.
Now our guest here is Dr. Cindy Joseph. I'm going to let her introduce herself. Hi, I'm Cindy Joseph. I'm the daughter of the nurse that was attacked. I'm a physician. I work in South Florida. I was born and raised in Florida. I've been at my mom's side pretty much the entire time since the attack happened.
So you want to tell us about your mom? Just what she like? My mom was, ask anyone, the most sweetest person, the most compassionate person. She always puts everyone ahead of herself, not just her family, but her friends, her patients.
She was just a very all-around wonderful person. She loved to go to church. She loved God. When she was off, you'd probably find her at church, more than likely. She liked cooking, preparing food. She grows vegetables and fruits in her garden. So she would take those vegetables and fruits and she would prepare foods for her friends and family. She loved her kids, her grandkids. She was so dependable. She's always been there for me and my siblings whenever we needed her. So
So we're just glad we can return the favor and be there for her. It sounds like she's a typical caregiver. Exactly. She puts other people before herself and she's 67 years old, was still working the bedside. So she's proven to be a nurse.
She loved bedside nursing. Yeah. She was like, those nurses or those patients are the sickest patients. They need my help the most. So that's why she stayed bedside. Um, I was trying to get her to, you know, do outpatient. She's getting older. It's easier, not as like strenuous, but she was like, no, the patients inpatient need me the most. That's where I want to be. So she's a, yeah, she's a great nurse and good person overall. Has she been a nurse here? Um,
- Her whole nursing career? How has her nursing career? - Yeah, so she wanted to be a nurse when she was little growing up in India, but due to other life circumstances, never got to do it. So she started becoming a CNA when I was in my teen years. So she became a CNA first. And then 21 years ago, she started working
at palms west and then she became an lpn and then she became an rn so it wasn't easy for her it took her several years because she had three kids and a family and she was working you know another job so it was her dream but you know she did it after after so many years and she loved it that's amazing um she chose nursing because she wanted to help people i assume yeah definitely i mean she's like always been a caregiver even before she was a nurse she was like the best caregiver to you know my siblings and me even as my kids she like
takes better care of them than I do. So she wanted to give back to the community. She wanted to help patients. And in her eyes, being an RN, nursing was the ideal job for that. And she really, really loved it. And it's what she always wanted to do since she was a little girl in India. That's amazing. Yeah.
So she's been a nurse for 21 years. That's a long time. Yeah. A long time at bedside too, like you said. It is a long time. Right. Not many lasts that long. No, no. I wanted her to retire at 65, but she didn't want to. Yeah. That just tells a lot about her though. Yeah. Her character. So the hospital this happened at was HCA Florida Palms West Hospital. What do you know about that hospital or what would you like to tell us about the hospital? Yeah.
Yeah, so Palms West, it serves the community of South Florida, Loxahatchee. They are a for-profit hospital, so they're very profit-driven because of that. I think it's around a 200, 250-bed hospital maybe. It's a local community hospital. Are you able to talk about details of the unit where she was attacked? Yeah, yeah, I can talk, yeah. I can give you some details about that. Yeah, so she worked on the tally floor, cardiac floor. It was on the third floor. This was not a psychiatric floor by any means. They didn't have the correct...
security to handle psychiatric patients or the correct safeguards in place. So it was just a regular tally floor. People came in for chest pain, high blood pressure, cardiac arrhythmias, things like that. It was very much not a psychiatric floor at all. It wasn't...
Equipped to handle. It wasn't equipped to handle, yeah, psychiatric patients. The first article I saw about the attack was Baker Act patient attacks nurse, essentially. And then I was like, okay. And then the next thing I did was...
look up is this hospital equipped to handle Baker Act patients because every hospital is so different. I think that's something the general public doesn't know. Just because you come in with some type of illness or disease doesn't mean that hospital can provide the care for you. And unfortunately, I'm a little unsure as to
the information was about him being a Baker Act patient. Because it's not just, oh, he has psych issues. He's a Baker Act patient. There's a little bit of a difference. Yeah, so there is a lot of stuff that led up to that being a Baker Act. This guy, he has a prior assault. In 2017, I want to say, he was arrested in Canada for assault and bashing someone's head into the car door. So he has that violent past.
Actually, the morning before he was admitted, his own family called the sheriff's department to try to get him to be involuntarily held in a psychiatric facility because he was acting weird, paranoid, delusional, out of character for him. He refused for whatever reason. He wasn't taking it in. I think he took himself, I think by foot, he walked to the hospital, which was about a mile, a mile and a half away from where the police saw him.
He went in saying he had chest pain and there was an incident on the CT scanner basically that kind of was alarming, I thought. They were trying to do a CT, he jumped off, was sprinting across the hallways in the hospital, so he had to be calmed down and secured by staff.
And then a psychiatric consult was done virtually. So not in person, but virtually. And that's when they Baker Acted him. And I do know as part of the psychiatric consultation, they always ask about assault history. So they were aware that he had this prior assault based on the fact that he was Baker Act and the fact that a psychiatrist saw him virtually. And this was the same visit?
This was the ER. It all happened at the ER. Okay, so same. And then shortly after that, you know, the family, from what I understand, the family came by and expressed their concerns that, you know, were worried that he may harm himself, he may harm others. So all this stuff they knew, the fact that he was Baker Act, the prior assault, the CT scanner incident, the fact that the family expressed his concern and even called the sheriff earlier that day, all these concerning flags, red flags, and yet...
Instead of keeping him in the ER where it's usually safer, there's more security, they decided to take him to the third floor, which is unsecure, apparently does not have adequate security, no safeguards in place, no panic buttons. I don't even know if the staff is trained to handle Vicarag patients. I asked my mom and she's like, "I don't really even think that we had proper training for psychiatric patients."
There is like a person sitting with him, a PCT or a CNA, but these are usually petite women and they can't touch the patients. What are they going to do if like something happens? Like they can't physically contain him. There is no armed guard, no tasers. Like,
And they'd have to call PBSO, which is a sheriff department, if something were to happen like they did. And these people are off-site. They have to physically come to the hospital, find where the incident is, because they don't know where the hospital floor is. Exactly. And that's in contrast to someone who actually works there, like an officer that works in the unit, who knows exactly when they say, like, three north, this unit. They know exactly where to go. There's a lapse in security. If they had adequate security, I don't think my mom's injuries...
would have been as severe and probably would have been preventative if these safeguards were in place.
So, yeah, there's so much to unpack with that because, like you said, the preventative measures are not there, period. They're not there. And this is not just HCA Florida Palms West Hospital. This is almost every hospital that I've heard about, that I've been to. And unfortunately, Leila is not the only person who has been assaulted. It happens every day. Her assault was brutal, though. And these hospitals seem to...
put profits over people. I usually say profit over patient, but at this point it's over people. It's over the staff. It's over anyone that's there because a for-profit hospital that makes money should be putting aside enough money to keep their staff safe and other patients safe. And the fact that
He had this... So I was confused on when did his Baker Act get enacted? When did this happen? And it was the same stay. In the ER before he was even... In the ER. Before he was even brought to the floor. And so that should be high alert patient. Exactly. She should have never... You're right about the sitters are not...
And it's not against the sitters, this is against the hospital. The sitters are not trained to deescalate a Baker Act patient. A psych patient is one thing, but he was violent. We're not trained how to deescalate that type of thing. They teach us very minimal deescalation tactics. And to be quite honest, they don't work a whole lot of the time. Yeah, and they can't even touch the patient. Right. Even if it was a bigger guy, you know, I mean...
From what I heard from other staff members who work there, the seders are usually petite, elderly women. This guy, I don't know if you've seen his structure. He's 250 pounds. He's very bulky, very strong, just tall.
one blow and then, you know, like it would just knock someone to the ground. Right. Especially a petite woman like my mom. Right. You know? But I agree. It really isn't a healthcare, you know, it's an epidemic because when I put out that post, it kind of was populated surprisingly, like, you know, within a day. Yeah. A lot of nurses and a lot of staff emailed me like from Palms West, but also other hospitals, you know, it's always the same thing. You know, they're always concerned about security. They complain to admin. Admin says, yeah,
things are okay, not a big deal, and something else happens, you know? Right. And then if they do have security, they have it during peak hours, you know, not during 24-7. And you just can't predict when someone violent is going to come in and cause chaos. You have to be 24-7 adequate security. And I don't know exactly what, if there is a formula, but I feel like there should be for like every like 25 to 50 patients, there should be like
you know, X amount of security guards. Absolutely. There should be like a formula, because a hospital that's maybe a 50-bed hospital
wouldn't require the same amount of security as like a 300 beds hospital, right? Exactly. So they typically have the same amount of security, which doesn't make any sense. Doesn't make any sense at all. I would think starting with staffing ratios, staff needs to be appropriate so that there is enough people to deescalate a situation or hear if something's going on. Because when we're missing staff, we're missing eyes, we're missing ears. And then staff
security on every unit, not just the ER. Your mom was on the third floor. Yeah. How long does it take security? And typically their office is around the ER. Exactly. So how long does it take them to get from one place to another? Or if they're on, I don't know, the 10th floor of the hospital and they have to make their way down. It's just...
It's not thinking ahead. And again, this isn't the first time this has happened. So why are we not making progress? I agree. Yeah. I mean, if you're going to cut corners, security should not worry you're cutting corners. It should be a requirement. Not just for nurses, doctors, techs, everyone. It's a requirement, not optional, you know, in my opinion. Absolutely. Absolutely.
I want to jump into exactly what happened so people understand where we're coming from with all of this. Do you want to tell that? Yeah, sure. So like, you know, to be honest, when this all happened, somebody called me from the hospital. I couldn't get a clear understanding of what happened. I asked, you know, what happened? Was it just one blow? Was it just his fist?
you know, but I couldn't really get a clear answer and even when I saw my mom it was definitely more than one blow. She was unrecognizable. And it wasn't until I got the police report from a reporter that I kind of saw what exactly happened. Essentially he said he had chest pain, I believe. She went in to check his, you know, BP. He took her head, smashed it against the wall, she fell to the floor. He straddled her on top of hers, punching her repeatedly on her face.
And then someone came into the room and saw him on top of her punching her repeatedly. They screamed. Then people started coming in. He, at that point, I think got a little scared. He jumped onto the bed, then jumped off the bed. Then he ran out of the room. I think he pushed someone down on the way. He went down the stairs across the hospital, out the door into the street.
In the street, he was trying to get into cars that were on the road. And then police had to be called outside police officers, and they held him down at gunpoint. And it wasn't until then that he kind of got down on his knees and allowed to be arrested. And then she was bleeding profusely from the face. No one heard her scream, so I'm imagining it was just too quick to really...
even defend herself. She was just knocked to the ground so quickly. Two workers saw her passed out actually on the floor. Two nurses passed out on the floor when they saw her in her blood. Yeah, so another nurse or an NP that was on the floor turned her to her side. She was coughing up blood. She was kind of going in and out of it. They had to intubate her on the spot because her coma scale was so low. And then they tele-transported her to St. Mary's, which is a Trauma One Center.
The first night was really, really unstable, really scary. I thought she might not make it actually. It's a day that's going to be in my mind forever, like a really, really, really traumatic day. Her blood pressure was dropping really low, 50s over 30s. I thought the injury to the brain, even if she was to make it, she'll suffer permanent brain issues from anoxia and stuff.
um so it was really scary for me because i you know knowing what i know and about like medical and what can happen like my mind kind of went to the worst possible scenario and just it was a really unstable the first two days were awful um but yeah that's essentially what happened you know she lost so much um bleeding from the face lost so much blood that her blood pressure dropped significantly she had to be transfused um she was intubated you know on the spot i was on a ventilator
needed epinephrine pressors to keep her pressures up. So it was really scary, like, you know, unexpected. I talked to her that morning and everything was fine. So like, you know, when they called me, you know, they actually called me from her number. So my daughter was sick at the time. She had a fever. I thought my mom was calling to check on her because she always calls when they're sick to see how they're doing, you know. But when I answered the phone, it was someone else. It was another guy. And that's when I knew my heart just dropped and something was wrong. Oh my God. You know, so...
I'm so sorry. Because that is traumatic for her and everyone involved, especially her family, her kids. Yeah, it really was. How long was she in the ICU? She was in the ICU, I believe, two weeks, I want to say, or so. But she was on pressers and they had to take her off pressers. And then she had an infection and she was having fevers. And I think it was two weeks, I want to say, give or take. Yeah. I had also read in an article that
not only was he beating her face, but he was screaming racial slurs or some type of hate comments towards her. Do you know anything about that? Yeah, I found that out after the fact, actually. So when he was running out of the hospital into the street, one of the police officers saw him, and then he was saying something along the lines of, Indians are bad. I hate Indians. I just beat the bleep out of an Indian right now. So he knew what he was doing, you know? So, you know, the hate crime is added on to his behavior.
his charges, which can escalate his charges. So right now the police Palm Beach Sheriff's Office is pressing charges against him for the criminal part of it. As they should. As they should, exactly. As they should. There needs to be consequences. Absolutely. I think I read his, I actually have a RIM document for him.
he remains in custody while awaiting trial and he's being charged with second degree attempted murder? Second degree attempted murder. If the hate crime is intact, it will escalate that to a first degree murder. Awesome. As it should be. But once again, because no one deserves to go through that for one, doing her job, doing her job well, staying at her job longer than most nurses do. Like it just shows that
what nurses are put through and other healthcare workers are put through just to do something that they love. I agree. Yeah. I mean, there's certain like certain things that can happen when you have a certain job. Like, you know, if you're a construction worker falls within the realm of possibility to like, maybe you have like an injury from like a,
I don't know, from something sharp, right? But being a nurse and having like almost beat to death, that's not within the scope of a normal expected work risk. It's way, way outside the scope, you know? And I've posted other workplace violence things on my page before. And some comments I'll get at the very, very bottom. That's where all the hate comments go. And they'll say, well, you signed up for this.
No, no, no, no, no. Nurses, no healthcare worker signed up for any form of physical, verbal even, or mental abuse. We should not be abused by other people because we're trying to care for people. And if we signed up for physical attacks, wouldn't we have like a bulletproof vest? Like police officers do. Exactly. Yeah, I totally agree. You know, I think like, you know, in the airport, TSA officers, if you even try to like be verbally abusive, there's an automatic felony and you're fined like...
I don't know, $100,000 or more. I mean, our nurses offer that same, you know, that same... Yes, the same tactic. Why are we not given the same opportunity to have the safety precautions as other people? And some states I've read do have felonies, or you can get a felony for assaulting a nurse, but it's not nationwide, which is so strange. I think that's where the problem is. You know, I think like there's no...
regulations federally to determine what is and what isn't adequate security. And so it's oftentimes left to the hospitals. And when that happens, you know, hospitals are going to put profits over people over safety, and they're not going to do enough in terms of security. They're going to try to cut corners. And then when that happens, you know, what happened to my mom, things like that, or even worse happens. There needs to be like some kind of like, you
where every hospital is required to have, like this is minimum security. Every hospital must have X amount of armed guards per 50 patients or whatever, you know? And that needs to be implemented across the US. You know, there's nothing like that right now. There's no like, you know, policies. Yeah, there's no policies that makes this a requirement. And unfortunately, you know, hospitals, you know,
especially profit-driven ones, they're not going to do that if they don't have to. There's no one forcing them to. And there needs to be regulations and laws that force them to do this. Otherwise, they're not going to. Even, I think, like I read...
After so much time, I know a lot of nurses and a lot of people at Palms West, this is not the first time they had a security breach. And I know the nurses feel unsafe and they've asked for more security. And Palms West until this point hasn't really done that. And I think I heard now that they're going to have an armed guard in place, but I think it's only during business hours that they're hiring.
Once again. Which I'm not 100% sure, but that's what I've heard from media coverage and things like that, which is that's not okay. Like one armed guard during business hours. For a whole hospital. Yeah. What are we doing? Right. It's giving nothing. Exactly. It's, yeah, not giving enough for sure. Right. Mm-hmm.
I'm getting like shaking over here because it's infuriating to hear for one, all the details you told like that's also not being spread in the media that all the exact and I know that not everyone knows all the details but
It's like you get a little bit of information here and a little bit of information here and it's hard to place it all together. I feel like the news should be like, this is what's happening, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because when we don't give all the information, once again, I feel like the general public doesn't understand just how bad it is. Yeah, exactly. They hear armed guard, you know, and they think, oh, that's good, you know, but is it 24-7 armed guard? Is it enough armed guards, you know? Yeah. Yeah.
So there's a question that like, you know, that are not answered. Right, right. What do you know what the hospital's initial reaction was? Or are you allowed to speak on that? Yeah. So initially, they didn't really say a whole lot. There was really no reaction. Even now, they don't really accept any accountability. You know, they haven't accepted at all, which kind of makes me mad because, you know, it's her life. This changed her life. It changed our life. It's going to cause a permanent disability from, you know, from this one preventable incident. And
there really hasn't been any accountability from their part. I think, you know, after maybe a couple weeks they put out something which I read in the media, it said that they were going to have like a station in the ER that police officers can come there voluntarily to work.
And they would pay them, you know, they would pay them, but it wasn't like a contracted position. And there was a lot of scrutiny from the police officers within Palm Beach County. And, you know, they were saying that, you know, that's not a guarantee that there's going to be an officer there. And honestly, the police officers are overworked. They work a lot. I don't know if they're going to want to come back after their shift and do more work, you know.
So they were they were scrutinized by the sheriffs within this county. And I think one of them said, you know, if they want us to be there, they need to do what every other hospital does, which is contract someone to be there full time. Exactly. And after that, I last thing I heard was that they were going to hire a contracted officer that was, you know, from the sheriff's department.
again, I'm not sure exactly what this entails, like what the hours are, how many there are, where they're going to be located. I don't know those details, but last I heard they were going to hire a contracted officer. I think I did read in one of the media reports that it would be 40 hours a week though, which in my opinion is very insufficient because things happen anytime and
There's more than 40 hours in a week. Exactly. And the feedback I've gotten from nurses, you know, who emailed me and stuff, had said a lot of them, you know, had violent experiences that happened like midnight, 10 p.m., when there's not much staff there. That's when a lot of the assaults and things happen, you know? So you can't predict. I forgot to ask this earlier. This was, Leela is a day shift nurse. She's a day shift. She works usually 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Yeah. Has the hospital apologized? Have they spoken to you guys at all?
Not to me directly. I don't know if they, maybe they can't, but I haven't really seen anything in the media about anything that I can recall off the top of my head, actually. I think they might have put something out that said, we are devastated that this happened and we support, you know, like...
you know pr pr pr exactly exactly but exactly but it's honestly pathetic because and yeah maybe they can't speak out because of legal reasons but that because that would mean they'd have to take accountability and it's like yeah you need to take accountability exactly and i think they need to make changes you know these nurses are scared i i know um a couple of my mom's co-workers had to take time off because they were so traumatized from this event that were on the floor um
And a lot of them are very mad, you know? So yeah, there needs to be definitely a lot of change, I think. Absolutely. I saw an article earlier today about a union wanting to, let me pull it up here real quick, a petition demanding safety upgrades at Florida HCA hospital with the hospital's response. And which is almost comical and in the most crude way, because it's,
It's so irritating hearing this, but the union's asking for armed sheriff deputies, like we've already talked about in, in the emergency rooms, which they should be everywhere in my opinion, but I digress. Increased staffing levels, panic buttons and regular safety drills, faster incident response protocols. There's a quote here. It says I started working in 2001 and it's been the same thing that we've been dealing with back in 2001 as we are today about staffing, about safety, about safety concerns. Um,
Ram Dass, a SEIU 1199 organizer says. And then down here, HCA's response says, calling the petition, quote, nothing more than a publicity stunt by the union's leadership.
That's ridiculous. I mean, it seems that this is the theme again and again. Like these nurses have just have been, I mean, not just nurses, like healthcare workers have been asking for safety, you know, way before this happened. This is not the first dangerous incident that happened at this hospital. It's not going to be the last if things don't change.
The admin's not the one working on the floor every day with the patients. They're not the one that puts themselves at risk for death or something like that. These nurses are the ones that are actually with the patients time and time again, day in, day out. They're the ones who know what feels safe and what doesn't feel safe.
I think it's highly inappropriate to say that it's a publicity stunt. This is anything but. I mean, they're reaching out to you because they want help. This is not an appropriate or empathetic response to that cry for help. You know, this is...
It's a slap in the face. Yeah, it really is. It's really telling you what they're really thinking. Especially after what happened to my mom. And I know for a fact they didn't have panic buttons on that floor. And that's a bare minimum. Yeah, it's easy. Panic button on the badge. Exactly. Maybe when that happened, if my mom was cognizant she could have pushed the button quickly. There could have been a response team. And the response time was not fast enough because as evidenced by her degree of injuries, it wasn't fast enough. And
Again, I think their protocols need to be changed because, again, I just don't know why he was taken from the ER, who was more secure, more people to the floor. I do know that, you know, the payout of someone in the ER versus being admitted to the floor is much higher when you admit them to the floor, being from insurance reasons. And then it always...
most from what we can point back to, it typically comes back to money. It comes back to greed. It comes back to profit over people. It's not an appropriate response to say, let's make it by the state. Let's let the state handle it. No nurses all over don't deserve just because their state decides not to do something about it to in healthcare workers in general. I say nurses because I'm a nurse. So that's what comes to mind. But, but,
it's absolutely absurd and it's just it feels like we're talking in circles for years and nothing gets done nothing gets done I mean federally for sure TSA is a federal you know federal felony if you assault them why not nurses why not healthcare workers you know it's
It's just really sad. Honestly, I do outpatient, so I don't really work in the hospital as much anymore. So it really opened up my eyes to how much violence was occurring to health care workers after this experience. It really opened my eyes, and it's not okay. It's really not. It's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking, yeah. And it's just really sad that it took something as catastrophic as my mom almost dying for people to see that. I really hope that there is change because at least...
some good will come out of her, you know, her trauma, you know? Right. It's awful that it had to come to something so...
devastating yeah but i do think that it's stirring the nurses are upset as they should be yeah we we don't want one of our own to get brutally attacked like that it's it's devastating that's just the word that keeps coming to my mind yeah no 100 and what happens with us when something minor happens on the unit like let's say we missed a protocol or we
I don't know, we did something wrong. Or actually what really happens is had Lila not been so brutally attacked, let's say that it was just a little thing here and there, management most likely would have pulled her aside and said, what could you have done differently? That's what nurses are telling me, actually. They're emailing me that saying when they report something, that's what management does. They gaslight us. Exactly. That is...
that is inappropriate. You know, that's not what should be happening. What they should be asking is how could our protocols been different to prevent this from happening? Yes. What do you think would have helped us or how can you tell us what we could change? And that's kind of what I want to say to HCA. What could you have done differently? Yeah. What could you have done differently to prevent my mom almost dying? You know, I want to shake them. It's like, I want to, I want to harm you, but not really, but you know, you just want to shake them. It's like,
And a lot of these admins, they don't work in the clinical floor. They're not clinical providers. They're just working their C-suites, you know, and they are...
protected from all of this, you know? So they don't really have an idea of what's going on on the floor day to day. The nurses do, the techs do, the doctors do, you know? It's easy to turn a blind eye when you don't walk down there once a shift even. Right, to see what's actually going on. Exactly. If they had direct patient contact and they were at risk, I'm sure things would be different. Oh, I'm sure they would be different. You're absolutely right.
What has this experience been like with lawyers? I mean, it's just the first time I've actually, I mean, our whole family's ever really worked with one, to be honest. I mean, everyone's been pretty great for the most part. I mean, I think our lawyer, our law team is really good and they're really good at what they do. My friend, who's an attorney, one of my best friends, she helped me find one towards the beginning of the case. Honestly, that wasn't the first thing on my mind when this happened. I called her kind of just to like,
you know cry for the situation and she's like you know being a lawyer she's like you need to find a lawyer like right now it's really important so she actually did the research for me and found a really good one and hooked me up with them and called them for me so if it wasn't for her i probably wouldn't even have a lawyer until maybe like start looking right now yeah but i'm glad that we had one at the beginning because i think it was important to kind of like tease through all of this whole situation it was nice to have them by my side and knowing that someone was on our side absolutely that has like legal experience and you know expertise
I bring that up because I think a lot of people get... If something like this happens to them, they don't know what to do. And so I do think it is appropriate, if you can, to immediately seek legal assistance because things can happen so quickly and change. And unfortunately, as we're hearing and seeing, the hospital's not on our side. They're not. They seem like they would be initially, but they're not. No, no. Yeah. And it's nice to ask them on, hey, what do you think I should do about this? Like...
what does this mean and giving me guidance, you know, it's been really helpful for our whole family. So we really appreciate the help that we've gotten from them. Good. So why did you decide to share this story?
To me, it seemed like the only appropriate response. It never in my mind occurred to me to not say anything. You know, February 18th is a day that's going to be traumatically ingrained in my mind forever. I'll never forget, you know, walking into that hospital room in the ICU and seeing what my mom looked like, how unrecognizable she was, the fact that I thought she's going to die. I just, I was just really angry, you know, like,
she went to work that morning, um, expected to be a normal day, you know, um, she had her pajamas light out at home to when she gets back to where, when she got back. And when I saw that, like all our normal stuff, like she had her jewelry, like ready in the side, her pajamas light out for when she gets back, her towel set for showering, but she never got to go home. I was just angry that this happened and, um, it was preventable, you know, um,
I'm just mad that the hospital didn't take care of her because she goes there every day taking care of these patients, violent patients sometimes, and the least they could do is offer adequate security. I think hospitals, they do put patient safety and make it a priority because it looks bad on them if patients get bad. And there's questionnaires and surveys that look at patient satisfaction. So that ties directly to how hospitals work.
how they do perform. And, but for staff, are there staff surveys to ask how well these hospitals do? Because they would not do very well. There's nothing kind of telling that they need, that they need to do better for staff. So I thought people needed to be aware that, you know, that, um,
hospitals are prioritizing, you know, safety over security. And a lot of nurses, a lot of healthcare workers are getting injured and it's not okay. And I was just enraged. And this incident, it's going to change her forever. You know, the side that she was attacked by the trauma, she's probably not going to regain full vision. So her vision is going to be compromised and she's going to have trauma from this. She's going to be
you know, have PTSD from this. Our whole family is going to have PTSD from this. So it changed the course of our, all of our lives forever. And, you know, that's not okay because if they had adequate security in place, adequate protocols, which had been complained time and time again, like this wasn't the first, it wasn't the first time this wouldn't have happened. You know, this is not the first incident. Um,
There was actually in 2023, you know, at the same hospital, something that happened, which should have been a sign for them to kind of ramp things up, to tighten security up. A psychiatric patient was on the floor. She went to the NICU, took a baby that was intubated off the ventilator, took that baby, ran down the stairs into the street. And then same thing, police had to detain her outside the hospital. And on the way out, she stabbed three health care workers.
So it wasn't the first time that this hospital, the same hospital, by the way. So this isn't the first time. I mean, if, if that wasn't a wake up call to do something, I mean, I don't know what was, I mean, this was going to happen. Right. Like without any changes. So I'm not surprised it's happened. This was waiting to happen. The whole, like the whole plateau was, it was inevitable. Yeah. And then,
actually like two weeks after my mom's assault um there was another baker act incident on the same floor so there is a baker acted patient who was admitted for something he escaped out of his room was in the hallway getting agitated arguing with staff and they had to call the sheriff to come in there's um recordings of like um the nurses calling um for the sheriff on how they were
asking the sheriff to come in, he was, you know, you can hear him screaming in the background, very agitated. And this only isn't a risk for the nurses, but also for other patients, you know, because he was in the hallway. He wasn't even in his room. And I think I read somewhere that it took six staff members to kind of like contain him, untrained, non-secure, like just like regular staff members and an unarmed security guard. Yeah.
So it's happened literally two weeks after my mom's attack. So this hospital, even after what happened, are still bringing these Baker Act patients into the third floor where she worked without correct security. What are they doing? Right. They're not equipped. You're not equipped to take these patients. Stop taking these patients. Take...
send them elsewhere or stop everything, change your budget immediately and get some help in there. - Yeah, or keep them in the ER. - Exactly, do something. - Do something. - They're doing nothing. - They're doing nothing and like, you know, a Baker Act patient by definition is like a patient that can harm themselves
or harm others. So generally that includes assault precautions, correct assault precautions, which they don't have. So if they don't have that, why are they bringing these patients onto a non-psychiatric floor? Right. You know, without the correct precautions, especially what happened to my mom, like after that, how can they in their right mind, two weeks after that continue, continue. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's unbelievable. It is unbelievable. And I'm so sorry. Like I just, I'm,
I'm out of words. This is unreal. It's, it is unreal. Like, I mean, I just, I just want to shake them, you know? Like, I mean, these nurses are begging for secure for like, you know, more security and they're like doing the bare minimum, you know, like not even because there's still not a panic button. I have a nurse that reached out to me. Is there one now? There's not, there's not still even from, this was about three weeks ago from this recording. So unless in between there,
There has not been a panic button. That's an easy fix. That's an easy fix. And it's not, it won't solve anything, but it will give one little, here, here's something until we get the next installment. And I also believe there are rooms with recording in the rooms. And I don't know why this guy, why he wasn't in a recorded room with, with like with video recording in his room. And one of the nurses told me that they have some rooms that are, that do record. So all of these red flags, and yet they put him in like a,
non-secure room and I think there was like it wasn't a clear view into the room it was kind of blocked off by something so it wasn't going to try to say well there was a sitter once again we can go back to the beginning of this podcast as to why that's just not it's not enough and it's not on the sitter it's it's not enough we're not trained yeah what is the sitter going to do suppose this guy attacked I mean attacked my mom and if there was a sitter in the room which I have to verify that there was you know what is she going to do a petite little woman who's
maybe frail they can't touch the patient they have to call outside law enforcement and that takes time yeah you know and it's not good enough yeah and not doing enough especially for someone his size and his stature like you need an armed guard for someone like that you know for sure with his history and everything
How do you feel about the media coverage? Do you feel like it's been fair? It's been balanced? Or do you feel like we could do more? How do you feel? I think they did a pretty good job of getting the facts right for the most part. You know, now it's been some time. It's kind of like dying down a little bit. So as expected, the coverage is kind of drifting a little bit. But that's expected with any kind of major thing in the media expected. But I think they did a pretty...
Pretty good job of kind of, you know, of summarizing the facts. Yeah, for the most part. At least the ones that I've seen. Has there been response from the public other than nurses? We know that nurses have reached out to you. Has the public been willing to help or listen or...
Yeah, I mean, you know, they have been. They sent my mom cards. You know, she gets so many cards and well wishes. There's a GoFundMe for her. So they've been donating to that as well. You know, not just nurses have emailed me, but like patients have actually emailed me from Palms West. And patients have told me that like they witnessed, you know, other patients being violent, right?
There was one incident where one patient told me that like there was an agitated patient. She was in the ICU and this patient, she woke up, there was an agitated patient with leads on his chest standing over, standing like in a room, just kind of like screaming, you know? So like, it's not just nurses, but I feel patients also feel unsafe because there's inadequate security. Yeah. So, but a lot of nurses have emailed me from not just Palms West, but also kind of throughout HCA and throughout, you know, the US actually. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, that's amazing because it's spreading. It's as it should, yeah. And change can happen. Hopefully, you know, this will kind of force them to make meaningful change, not just change, but like meaningful change. I'm hoping we can get a legislator involved. I've never dealt with anything like that, but I think we have to get a legislator involved because...
Leela's story is important and everyone else's who has been attacked. There was a nurse in one of the Carolinas, I can't remember which one, who was an ER nurse and a psych patient attacked her, jumped off the bed, attacked her, broke her leg. And so it's just like, it's happening. There are so many stories. There are so many. I can't keep up. And so legislation needs to happen. I agree. And I definitely want to try to get involved with that now that I'm kind of seeing all of this happening.
horrible stuff that's happening to these healthcare workers and definitely needs to be a legislator involved in it. It needs to be some kind of something enacted where hospitals are required to like do a
a certain amount of things to protect their workers because again, like if you defer to them, they're going to do what's most profitable. They're going to like cut corners. They're going to do bare minimum security. Like an unarmed guard is cheaper than an armed guard, right? They're going to go with the unarmed guard. You know, one guard is cheaper than hiring three guards. They're going to hire like one guard, you know, just to say that they did it. And I think one of the things that I heard one of the nurses at Palms West say that like now they're putting up signs that say we will not tolerate violence. Like what is that going to do? Like...
It just makes me roll my eyes, literally. Like, it's again a slap in the face. It's telling you, we don't care about you. We don't care. Here's something for the PR. Right. So, you know, it looks like we're doing something, you know, but like, you think a patient's going to be like, oh, okay, I guess I won't hit the nurse today because the sign says it, you know? Right. It's not. What is that going to do? Absolutely nothing. It's ridiculous.
A couple more things. I was going to say, you were saying there's Prescani scores, which is what patients can review the hospital. That's what it's called. My husband and I developed an app a few years ago. It's still in the works, but for nurses, initially for nurses to rate and review hospitals anonymously that we've worked for because...
Nurses will go on Facebook or on their social media and talk about somewhere they've worked and that hospital system will blacklist them so they can no longer work for that hospital. So people are scared to speak out against whatever the hospital's doing, which we found so once again ridiculous. We're being silenced. We're not allowed to, we didn't sign up to be attacked. We didn't sign up to deal with ridiculous work environments. And so we're hoping that maybe that could also help change society.
That'll be amazing. Yeah. Because, um, can I just like, um, touch on that real quick? You know, a lot of nurses have said that, you know, when they reach out, they want to be anonymous because they're afraid of retaliation. A lot of them have told me that, you know, the palms west has said, you can't talk about it. Hush, hush. You know, a lot of them have been fired because they spoke out and that's not allowed. It's actually, there's rules against that. That's illegal. It's illegal. Yeah. It's,
definitely legal. But they'll still do it. Yeah, so I want to urge people, like, if that happens to you, to reach out and file a formal complaint. OSHA and the NLRB has a way you can complain online about that, and they'll look into that hospital because that's illegal and it's giving the hospital power, you know, and we don't want that. Yes. We want to bring it back to the
the healthcare workers. And one way to do that is to reach out to OSHA, reach out to NLRB and to complain and they'll investigate the hospital because that's illegal. Like you said, they can't do that. It's definitely a hundred percent illegal. That's federally illegal. Yeah. That's one thing you can do. And if, if you've been retaliated in the past, you know, still reach out and complain about it because I don't think people realize that. And I don't think people complain about it and that'll cause investigation into the hospital. And, um, you know, that'll make them maybe more, um,
willing to make changes and make the voices of healthcare workers heard more and not okay. I'm glad you touched on that. Absolutely. Lastly, how can listeners and other nurses help? But I think you just answered it. I did. GoFundMe. My mom has a GoFundMe for her medical expenses. And also, I urge people to complain about...
things that happen at work, if you get attacked, if you get hit, no matter how small you think it is, complain. And don't just complain to like your hospital complaint system because who knows where that's going to go? It's internal. Complain to other regulatory agencies, complain to OSHA, complain to the Joint Commission, complain to, I don't know, whatever. Maybe even your senators. Maybe the senators, write a letter to senators. But OSHA for sure, OSHA is the one that primarily deals with workplace violence.
And I just feel like if they get a lot of complaints from a certain hospital, that'll force them to look into that hospital. So don't just complain to like your hospital because that's internal. Complain to OSHA. Yes. Something I learned the hard way is HR is actually not our friend. They are the hospital's friend. That is the hospital's friend. They are there to prevent, um, um,
against the hospital. So if you do complain internally, something I was told early on as well is BCC your personal email so that they cannot see you sent this to your personal email. That's a good idea. Because if you do get fired, the first thing to go is your work email. You do not have access to that anymore.
And there's a reason for that. Yeah. So all these things, like make sure you're sending to your personal email as well. And but OSHA is the most important. OSHA, yeah. Because like I think they have a lot of power and they're outside the hospital system. Because if you complain to the hospital, like you said, they're going to be like, well, what could have you done differently to prevent this? You know, that's what they're going to say. Exactly. Exactly.
I just want to thank you so much for doing this. Like I said, I love that your first thought was why would I not continue to speak out? But I think some people get scared into silence for one reason or another. And I think it's so important to use your voice when you can. Agreed. I just love it.
Love that you're doing that for your mom. Obviously, it's your mom. So like of course, yeah, I just mean all the health care workers You know, I mean myself I'm a health care worker. So like I just I can't I really feel for this cause so good it Yeah, I get it. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Absolutely I wanted to tell you guys Leela's go fund me will be in the description along with the petition and
We'll have a few links in the description, so please check that out. It could help other healthcare workers, Leela directly, or someone you know personally. I wanted to add one last thing. If anyone has any information that could help Leela's case, anything regarding security or staffing safety protocols within HCA Florida, Palms West Hospital, any personal stories as well, we're going to have an email for you to reach out to. And I really encourage you to send that information as it could help Leela and
anyone else in the future. Thank you so much, guys.