Diary of a Trauma Nurse

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Stabbed With a Pen

(This is one of my favorite stories)

“Please take this medicine” begged my coworker to her patient, “it will help you stop getting sick!!!!”. The non English speaking patient with the trach refused to take the phenergan to stop his nausea. He was angry, paranoid, and was violently shaking his head. He told me in Spanish that he thought we were giving him medication to harm him. I explained to him in Spanish that the medication was to help stop his nausea and vomiting. He didn’t buy it. I sat beside him and assured him that we didn’t want to harm him but that we were trying to get him better so that he could get out of our unit. He was so close to moving to a regular room, having his trach removed and going home. He was pacing and acting very nervous. I walked out and told my coworker “sorry, I tried.”
Within 15 minutes there was chaos! There was ear-piercing screaming, we heard tables being turned over, people running, just downright pandemonium on the stepdown side of the trauma unit. Our emergency button had been pushed to call for Security and METRO PD and our trauma surgeons and residents were in the room instantaneously. The patient had become crazed, picked up a pen from the bedside table, grabbed his nurse around the neck and stabbed her in the chest multiple times. Holy Christ!!!!!
He was trying to kill her. It only took a few seconds for him to be taken down by our docs and when the police officers got there the trauma attending said “take him to jail.” The response, and this is the part I LOVE that makes it one of my favorite stories. The response was, “we can’t take a trached patient to jail.” So, you guessed it, the trauma doc reaches over, snips the trach ties, pulls out the trach and says “ok, NOW take him to jail.” I loved it.
Our coworker was out for many months but finally returned and we were so glad she did. You never know what is going through a psychotic mind, but then, you never know what is going through a trauma surgeon’s mind either. =)

CoryTraumaRN posted today at 9:25 PM

Comments:

Hey Cory, current reader here. Was this a recent happening?

# posted by

Anonymous : 2:02 PM

This happened in 2004.

# posted by

CoryTraumaRN : 11:57 PM

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