Healthcare, Nursing Up De Palma: «Ospedale del Mare in Naples, a “difficult” patient bites off a nurse’s finger. Brutal attack in the psychiatry ward. How much is the life of a health professional worth today?
We find ourselves commenting on yet another scandalous news story, yet another episode of unprecedented violence towards our nurses.
We are in the psychiatry department of the Ospedale del Mare in Ponticelli. Here the attention for the safety of our professionals should be double, because it is not a question of inexplicable blind fury that suddenly explodes on the part of what is apparently a calm citizen, perhaps “simply” anxious for the health of a relative.
In this case we are faced with a patient with well-known mental disorders who, according to the witnesses’ story, even bit off a finger of the unfortunate nurse who was trying to calm his anger and his out of control behavior.
How much is the life of a nurse worth? To what extent must a healthcare professional, committed every day to “fight the battle” for the protection of the community’s health, become the sacrificial victim of a dangerous and dramatic crossroads, like between two fires, with no apparent way out? ».
Thus Antonio De Palma, National President of Nursing Up.
«On the one hand we are grappling with the growing “bad culture” of a community that transforms nurses into enemies, into scapegoats for disorganization and long waits in emergency rooms.
On the other hand, too often, healthcare companies, our employers, forget that they are responsible for our safety and as such should feel primarily involved in what happens every day in the wards, especially as in this case in risk departments such as psychiatry, acting in concert with politics to implement more decisive plans to protect health professionals, literally abandoned to themselves. The numbers of attacks in hospitals don’t lie!
According to what was reported by the association “Hands Off Hippocrates,” the attempt to administer therapy to the patient turned into a violent clash, culminating in a nurse losing a finger.
The young man, in a state of great agitation, strenuously resisted the treatment, struggling so violently that he managed to bite off the finger of one of the nurses. The healthcare staff, courageous and determined, tried in every way to contain him, but the patient’s aggressiveness reached extreme levels.
It wouldn’t have ended here, because the patient would also have attacked a nurse, hitting her full in the face and leaving her literally stunned on the ground.
We are faced with an episode, continues De Palma, what we are told is the 57th official attack that has occurred since January 2023 in the ASL Napoli 1, which although “born” from the difficult conditions of a patient, cannot be justified.
We are outraged, we are seriously worried about what happened and all this still risks happening every day in departments with “difficult” patients like the attacker.
The dramatic epilogue of this story, which leaves us astonished, is that it would not have been possible, at least for the moment, to sew up the nurse’s severed finger, who could therefore remain with this handicap forever.
And is there anyone, concludes De Palma, who still has the courage to ask themselves why care professionals are taking to the streets to protest and carry out strikes like the one on December 5th?
How much is the life of a nurse in Italy worth? We should never stop asking ourselves: we have truly reached a point of no return”, comments De Palma.
#Patient #removes #nurses #finger #Assault #psychiatry #ward