Avoid violence in the emergency department

Ask any hospital safety director and they will tell you violence in the ED is becoming an increasingly larger problem. The reason behind this is simple. The combination of long waits, a large population of uninsured patients, and the extreme stress that often accompanies ED visits creates a pressure cooker of high anxiety. Tempers flare and violence or threatening behavior ensues.

“Let me put it this way,” says Anthony N. Potter, CHE, CHPA-F, CPP, FAAFS, director of public safety at Forsyth Medical Center in Winston-Salem, NC. “Every officer that I have had injured since I have been here—and that’s five years—has been injured in the ED.”