Patient gets violent at Sault hospital, throws oxygen tanks

A patient became violent at Sault Area Hospital over the weekend, throwing oxygen tanks while in the emergency department.

Details were revealed in an anonymous Instagram post that has since been confirmed.

Dawn Armstrong, the Ontario Nurses Association (ONA) vice-president for Region 1, said the incident took place July 2.

“Thankfully none of our nurses were hurt," Armstrong said.

"There was a medic that was injured, but it's not just the physical toll, it’s the mental and emotional toll that these incidents are taking on my nurses and health care professionals.”

Sault police say a 59-year-old man was charged with assault and uttering threats. A 26-year-old woman also faces assault charges.

The hospital refused to confirm the details of the incident, but did say two violent incidents occurred on Canada Day.

“Sault Area Hospital takes all incidents of violence seriously, and we endeavour to take every precaution to protect our patients and healthcare workers," hospital spokesperson Brandy Sharp Young said in a statement.

"Violence will not be tolerated in our facility. Incidents of such behaviour will result in SAH taking appropriate action, which may include removal from our facility and/or prosecution.”

In 2021, the hospital created the Emergency Department Safety Improvement Project due to escalating incidents of violence.

“Based on the environmental risk assessment findings, an action plan consisting of several safety measures has been developed with the goal of improving safety in the emergency department," Sharp Young said.

"Measures include reconfiguration of access to the core ED, line of sight improvements, additional CCTV cameras, policy and procedure enhancements (violence flagging, development of safety plans, safety drills and mock exercises), personal panic buttons for healthcare workers, and safety education and training for staff and physicians."

Armstrong worked as a registered nurse in Dryden for 31 years before joining ONA. She worked in the emergency department there and said in the last five years, her job was terrifying as violent incidents began to increase.

Violence increased by 50%

“Since I’ve taken this position, I hear this every day that the rate of violence against our nurses and healthcare professionals has increased 50 per cent since the pandemic began," she said.

"It was already a huge issue prior to so this has only been exacerbated by that."

She said patients are becoming increasingly frustrated by long wait times and they are taking it out on frontline workers. Hospitals are also seeing more people with mental health issues.

“We need a huge strategy here in Ontario to increase the amount of nurses and health care professionals in our field," Armstrong said.

"We need to address the wait times for surgeries, for procedures within our emergency department. People don’t have access to primary care, so where do they go? They go to the emergency department so the emergency department gets backlogged and then all of the hospitals are over capacity. So where do the patients sit in our emergency department?”

This comes as a recent CUPE survey found a surge in physical and sexual violence against women, racially motivated attacks and use of weapons against hospital staff.

The poll found that 63 per cent of respondents experienced physical violence, 71 per cent of racialized workers report they are subject to harassment or abuse because of their race or appearance, 49 per cent of all categories of hospital workers experience sexual harassment and 36 per cent experience sexual assault.