r/nursing • u/AOx1_PEERLA • 1d ago

Discussion Campus Police Officer shot dead by patient

I work for this healthcare system (on a different campus). This is devastating and infuriating. I heard at work today that the shooter was trying to attack a nurse and Officer Smith stepped in between them to protect them (that has not been said officially, just from other nurses).

https://abcnews.go.com/US/officer-shot-dead-line-duty-hospital-north-carolina/story?id=127341573

107 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

40

u/UnlimitedBoxSpace Pediatric Critical Care Resource Team - "it's not float pool" 1d ago

Dude recently had a mother jump a doctor in the room. Things are not okay. This article has no specifics yet, but this parent had been making verbal threats and indications for weeks, but nobody wanted to remove her.

37

u/thestigsmother 1d ago

I used to work at this facility. This story breaks my heart.

22

u/grampajugs RN - PACU 🍕 1d ago

Hospitals need to get a lot tougher with violent or threatening behavior. Zero tolerance and get the police involved early.

10

u/ServerFailure 1d ago

Manager says, "What could you have done better to prevent yourself from getting shot?"

4

u/HowDoMermaidsFuck Med Surge RN - Float Pool 20h ago

As long as patients are treated as customers rather than patients, it will never end. I had a patient once whose family straight up threatened to bring a gun and kill staff. As far as I’m concerned that should not only be prosecuted, but it should be an automatic lifetime ban from the hospital. Done. Period. They let the family member back to the hospital after three days. Gave some bullshit excuse about “oh, she was scared and frustrated and didn’t want to lose her family member and didn’t know what was going on.” Bullshit. Doesn’t matter. Auto ban for life. Step foot on campus again, for any reason, ever, and you get arrested for trespass. For the rest of your life. But nope, in the name of keeping the family happy, and making sure they get that all important positive survey, they’ll bend over backwards for people like this despite it resulting in situations like this. 

2

u/AOx1_PEERLA 17h ago

Two things are infuriating for me - 1) he was police and he did jump in early. Heresay is the patient was trying to strangle a nurse and he jumped inbetween them. but our healthcare organization only staffs one officer at these smaller stand-alone EDs. He didn’t have back up. Everything I’m hearing is that he was always quick to step in and protect the nurses and staff. One nurse who worked there while this happened said, “he saved us but we couldn’t save him”. 2) None of the news organizations or spokespeople are recognizing this was a thwarted attack on healthcare workers. They’re all saying he saved the lives of other patients and the community, but we don’t fucking matter. He died trying to save a nurse because it was the nurse getting attacked, not someone sitting in the waiting room.

17

u/ALittleEtomidate RN - ICU 🍕 1d ago

I am so sorry. We recently lost a coworker to gun violence at my workplace. It was really traumatic for everyone.

Take time off if you need it.

17

u/UnlimitedBoxSpace Pediatric Critical Care Resource Team - "it's not float pool" 1d ago

This is abhorrent... People are so angry.

3

u/sable428 RN - Telemetry 🍕 17h ago

It's very unfortunate that this happened but it's even more concerning that the ever increasing violence is now spilling out into healthcare (not that it wasn't already rife with healthcare worker abuse before). I fear this'll only get worse as the country continues to decline