Penn Presbyterian Medical Center has installed metal detectors at hospital entrances and equipped front-line staff with wearable buttons to alert security immediately if they are in danger.
University City Hospital, home to Penn Medicine’s major trauma center, has taken increased safety measures in recent years to address the growing national problem of assaults against health care workers.
Staff are regularly trained to de-escalate conflicts. Security guards are stationed at the emergency room reception desk 24 hours a day, knocking down patients who ask for weapons at the emergency room door.
There wasn’t enough to protect three nurses Saturday morning when a car with a gunshot victim inside rushed into the emergency room. As nurses scrambled to pull the man out of the car, a Pennsylvania State Police cruiser pulled up, its siren blaring and its lights flashing. The driver sped away, hitting the nurse and the victim in the process.
The hit-and-run shocked health care workers across the Philadelphia region and prompted Penn to implement yet another security policy regarding patient drop-offs at Presbyterian Church. inside Rising violence against health workers Nationally, hospital officials and employees across the city say policymakers need to do more outside hospital walls to keep them safe.
” read more: OPINION: Hit-and-run shows it’s time to end violence against ER nurses and doctors
“We can give everything we can, but things like this are still happening,” said Lisa Triantos, clinical director of emergency and medical nursing at Presbyterian Hospital. “It keeps me up at night.”
Safety measures are in place at Presbyterian Church
Immediately after the hit-and-run incident, the Presbyterian Church began requiring people dropping people off at the emergency room to turn off the car and get out of the driver’s seat before a nurse could extricate the victim from the car.
Nursing staff respond to what first responders call a “scoop and run” when Philadelphia police encounter a gunshot victim and immediately transport the victim to the hospital without waiting for an ambulance. Being hit by a car isn’t the only risk the teacher faces. Studies have shown that this measure saves lives by saving time, but hospital staff can be injured if patients are not properly lifted from the vehicle.
Like many hospitals in the city, the hospital has long taken steps to prevent nurses from being injured due to heavy lifting.
Yaya Diakite, Presbyterian’s director of safety, said other safety measures have reduced the threat of people carrying weapons inside the hospital. As word spread about Presbyterian’s metal detector and patrol policy, fewer people brought guns into hospitals, but security guards still carry about 25 guns a month at the entrances of acute care hospitals, and about 20 guns a month overall at hospitals. He said they had found 30 guns.
Hospital officials say these measures have gone a long way in keeping staff safe. Presbyterian had the lowest number of reported employee-involved assaults of any major trauma center in Philadelphia from January 2022 to December 2023, according to an Inquirer analysis.
“One of the reasons our hospital has a lower rate of physical violence than other hospitals is because our organization strives to protect our staff as much as possible,” said Presbyterian CEO Bob Russell. That’s true.” “When you provide care to your patients, you have to feel safe.”
“We cannot stand idly by.”
Assaults against healthcare workers have increased nationwide in recent years. In a 2024 survey of 500 emergency nurses conducted by the Emergency Nursing Association, 56% said they had been verbally assaulted, threatened with violence, or physically assaulted in the past month.
Health workers across the city are reporting increased rates of physical and verbal violence, which contributes to burnout and stress. Emergency workers have also reported verbal and physical abuse.
On Thursday, a Philadelphia Fire Department paramedic was stabbed twice by a patient in an ambulance, leaving him in critical condition.
“As workplace violence worsens, where is the line between tolerating abuse and keeping us safe? Many of us are victims of verbal and even physical attacks. “Now we can no longer stand by and watch our colleagues get hit by cars,” nurses and doctors at the University of Pennsylvania wrote in an expert opinion piece for the Inquirer. wrote the following: Toward the enactment of new laws after hit-and-run incidents.
Rebecca Murphy, president of the nurses union at St. Christopher’s Children’s Hospital, said acts of violence like the hit-and-run at Presbyterian are a concern nurses in the city are grappling with.
“Most of the people I know that I work with could imagine something like that happening to one of us, because literally that’s the environment we work in. ,” said Ms. Murphy, an emergency room nurse who spoke in her capacity as a union representative.
” read more: Healthcare workers routinely face violence in Philadelphia hospitals
Although St. Christopher’s is a children’s hospital, its trauma center accepts anyone who needs medical assistance. The emergency room frequently treats adult patients suffering from gunshot wounds brought in by private vehicles simply because it is the closest hospital.
Murphy said she and her colleagues have dealt with verbal and physical abuse from family members and patients. Nurses understand the stressful nature of the hospital environment, but also want better legal protection against assault.
“I can’t do my job if I’m locked in a room and threatened,” Murphy said.
Calling on lawmakers to protect healthcare workers
Pennsylvania officials and PASNAP leaders are advocating for the passage of legislation that: Assault on health care workers would be a federal crime Provides direct funding to hospitals to improve safety measures.
In recent years, there have been cases in which some charges of assault committed by hospital staff never make it out of court.
Penn Presbyterian administrators have tried to support nurses who decide to sue patients or visitors, but the stress of court appearances and the uncertainty of whether the charges will be successful have ultimately led to their decision to sue their patients and visitors. Some nurses decide not to press charges. It’s also possible that a judge could dismiss the case because of objections from health care workers, Russell said.
“In recent years, federal judges have had assault cases dismissed because the patient was having a bad day,” Russell said.
At Presbyterian, Hawk said staff members are supporting the nurses injured in the hit-and-run and dealing with their own grief over the incident. When Triantos called Hawk with the news around 4 a.m. Saturday, she was so distraught that Hawk initially thought there was a family emergency.
Hawke said her first thought on the night of the accident was to get to the hospital as soon as possible to help the injured nurses – and that hospital staff were in a state of mental turmoil caring for her colleagues. He was about to shoulder a heavy burden.
And she added: “It was a very productive night in the ED. We knew there were other patients to care for.”
