The training was stupid, and the instructor actually admitted that it was designed to absolve the hospital of any liability of a patient were to attack a nurse, because now we can’t sue the hospital for not providing us with training. If a violent event happens, it must be the nurse’s fault for not properly de-escalating the patient’s behavior.
Today’s class was 8 hours long. The first four hours was on how to redirect the patient’s behavior. The training said that all behavior is a form of communication, and the patient is simply trying to tell you that there is some sort of problem that the health care provider needs to address, but doesn’t have the words to be able to express it, so this manifests as “Risk Behavior.” The only proper reply to this “risk behavior” is to safely, and in a non-confrontational way, control and redirect the patient until the patient can realize that what he is doing isn’t productive. It’s called nonviolent crisis intervention, and I think it is bullshit that is designed to cover the employer’s legal ass, and who cares if employees get hurt? Healthcare systems hide behind the workers’ compensation immunity shield, so you can’t sue them if they trained you to avoid violence. They can, however be sued if one of their employees defends themselves from a violent attack using a violent response.
The next hour was all about how employees need to remain detached and not allow the patient that is in crisis to goad or bait you into engaging them.
Then we broke for lunch before returning to learn the practical skills. The first step to each one is to “take a non-threatening stance that is designed to not provoke the patient into engaging in risky behavior.” Then, if the patient tries to hit, grab, bite, or shove you, how to break free and escape to run away and call for help. The key is for the employee to avoid violence.
I was the only male there, so I got to be the one that the instructor kept using for demonstrations. One of the scenarios was how to escape a front chokehold where the patient is facing you and attempts to grab you by the throat. The instructor, was roughly my size, had us watch a 1 minute video on how to escape this and said let me demonstrate, then spun around and grabbed me by the collarbones with both hands. I swear with all of my being that I didn’t do it on purpose. He caught me by surprise because I was zoned out and not really paying attention. What happened was reflex.
I brought both hands up through the middle of his arms, then palmed his face with my left, causing him to lean backwards slightly. Once he was off balance, I stepped into him, put my right leg behind him and shoved. He landed on his ass. The entire class got to hear about how what I did was a violent response, and would get you in a discipline issue of we were ever to do that to a patient.
I don’t give a shit. I will not allow myself to be some crackhead’s punching bag and spend the rest of my life eating through a straw from my wheelchair. A couple of events from Florida this year drive that point home:
A nurse for Palms West Hospital had every bone in her face broken by a patient who attacked her. It was two months before she could walk well enough to go to a rehab center. She is still there, and hasn’t yet returned home, as far as I know. The hospital responded by designating a desk in the ED for the use of a sheriff deputy, to encourage them to hang out there. Also, that makes them a substation, which many hospitals use to declare that they are a police station, so concealed carry is off limits. Most hospitals only use unarmed security, and many times those security guards are unarmed women and old men.
A pair of nurses in Port Charlotte, FL were attacked in March. No one was arrested.
16 Comments
@HomeInSC · October 27, 2025 at 10:09 pm
You deescalated his hypothetical ability to do violence. Is there video?
Academics think that words can do anything and spend lifetime jacking off with a dictionary making up all kinds of nonsense. Yes, you can manipulate millions of gullible people by redefining the meanings of words, misusing language, and threatening to call them bad names (racist, bigot, etc) but there are crazy people out there who are immune to anything but a swift kick.
Jen · October 27, 2025 at 10:59 pm
The perky 20-something they put in charge gave me a whole hall- eight patients, and a nekkid combative drunk guy. And no help. I realized I was gonna get hurt, and nobody cared. And it’s my license on the line. I finished my shift and quit.
They replaced me with a recently retired co worker whom they pressed back into service. She’s older than me, and was looking forward to time with grandbabies. Instead, one of our patients threw her into a wall and cracked her head open. The next week, the manager called her in, gave her a reprimand, and said, “What could you have done differently?”
NVCI is total bs.
Fishlaw · October 27, 2025 at 11:00 pm
So you have trained yourself to instinctively react to an attack–awesome.
So what WAS his suggested response to a front choke?
Divemedic · October 28, 2025 at 4:15 am
Grab your attacker’s wrists, push them away as you step back. As soon as they let go, escape and go get help.
We were told that not following this can be considered violence and subjects you to possible discipline. I don’t care. This was a system designed by lawyers NOT to work. This method is only designed to do two things:
1 Absolve the employer of liability
2 Make it appear as though employees are actually trained
No one who has ever been in a real no-holds-barred fight for your life will ever be overpowered or defeated by this. The saddest thing is that two of the four other nurses in today’s class were about 5’2″ and weighed about 100#. If someone attacks them, their only hope is a nearby person willing to do violence will come to their aid. That’s what happened back in December when a violent patient attacked a pregnant doctor in my ED. I defended her. If that happened today, I could be fired for that.
Tom from East Tennessee · October 28, 2025 at 8:28 am
This whole thing brings on what Kim Du Toit calls a “Red Curtain of Blood” moment. It’s the moment of being forced into being fired or disciplined for not going along with the fantasy they’re pretending is true. It’s similar to the what’s being forced on some of the blue cities where they pretend that violent criminals can be non-violently de-escalated if you have enough social workers and that you’re to blame if violence occurs instead of the criminal or mentally ill guy. When it goes bad, it’s your fault not theirs.
Their attitude about mass shooter attacks is the same. Shooting back is the proven response but there’s some risk in that, so instead they have the unarmed security speedbumps and tell you to run/hide/fight with a desk stapler. They’re not trying to prevent or even mitigate these events they’re trying to stay out of trouble until it happens and then avoid accountability of it does happen. Too bad for us though if you’re there when it happens.
Dan · October 28, 2025 at 5:28 pm
Classes like this in NO WAY absolves a hospital from liability if you are a victim of a criminal attack. Any decent lawyer will wipe the floor with them in court and the hospital WILL do it’s best to settle a lawsuit by an employee deliberately injured while on the job. These classes are invariably mandated by law…and the hospital is simply looking for the cheapest way to satisfy the law requiring they “address violence”. And yes…these classes are ALWAYS an impotent joke.
Dan D. · October 28, 2025 at 6:01 am
“I swear with all of my being…” reminded me of “As God as my witness I thought turkeys could fly!” LOL
Dude, you’re in a no-win situation there. I have no wit to offer just encouragement to let off the steam here on your blog and keep on helping people the best that you can. You’re good at and in a world of cruelty and indifference, American society needs men like you to keep acting.
Dan D.
Michael · October 28, 2025 at 6:17 am
Robert Heinlein spoke of the “Crazy Years”
Seems we are living them now.
Some quotes from Friday:
“Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms such as you have named…but a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.”
― Robert A Heinlein, Friday
“It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn’t the whole population.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Friday
“It seems to me that any law that is not enforced and can’t be enforced weakens all other laws.”
― Robert A Heinlein, Friday
Soon enough when working is far too dangerous folks will quit. Or get crippled-killed trying to do the “right thing”.
Then the collapse of systems and society.
A Civil Society involves violence to ensure it remains civil. The thug or random destructive person only respects superior violence.
Currently we are protecting the criminals instead of the law abiding.
The “Legal System” seems to be the problem here.
Grumpy51 · October 28, 2025 at 6:53 am
Downtown Dallas TX, Level 1 Trauma Center, has their own police force. Female ED docs weren’t getting the proper coverage (protection) they should. IOW, hospital police were more interested in protecting the hospital v the staff. Female docs started calling Dallas PD for assaults. Hospital had a conniption. The docs basically stated ‘they broke the law, your people aren’t doing anything, so we call the real cops.”
Its been a 5 years since I worked there (lost my job for refusing tot ake the jab). But I know several of those docs are still working there.
On another note, see my reply from your original post in this vein. And I’ll name hospitals if needed.
SiG · October 28, 2025 at 8:25 am
“… the instructor actually admitted that it was designed to absolve the hospital of any liability of a patient were to attack a nurse, because now we can’t sue the hospital for not providing us with training.”
Another example of how we don’t have “rule of law” we have “rule by lawyers.” Talk to the lawyers that advertise on the radio 24/7. They’ll sue for you and everyone says they’ll get you more money than the other ambulance chasers. “They offered a $20,000 settlement and we got over a million from them.”
neomunitor · October 28, 2025 at 8:54 am
I was in management for a big oil company. We worked in downtown New Orleans and occasionally had employees mugged at gunpoint or beaten because parking was remote from the building. We also had some concerns about mass shootings because the building had no armed guards, glass doors everywhere, and was over 50 stories tall. We had a strict no firearms policy and I was told, straight up, that those policies were to protect the company, not the employees.
Brother John · October 28, 2025 at 12:21 pm
This is the direct result of a generation brought up thinking signs saying BULLIES with a red circle/slash over it and “zero tolerance” solves anything at all.
When we lost teachers and administrators who weren’t too dumb or lazy to learn what happened in a fight situation and replaced them with morons who punish the bullied who finally found his feet as much as the bully.
They refuse to understand that people who insist on being problems will stop only when they are stopped by whatever means it takes.
We are ruled over by people who hate us, think we’re stupid, and have no idea how real life actually works.
SP RN · October 28, 2025 at 1:04 pm
See p.13 Fig. 14 of the excellent WWII manual “Get Tough” by Fairbairn (archived on-line), which shows an easily-learned-by-beginners hold break: open palm upwards chin jab combined with knee to groin. Not ‘non-violent’.
Toastrider · October 28, 2025 at 3:13 pm
I know you’re telling the truth, but God help me, my brain just absolutely seizes up at the line of thinking these idiots are espousing. It’s like being told 2+2=5 and if you disagree you’re in deep trouble. This would be implausible satire in a sane world.
All I will say is this: you can get a new job, but it’s harder to get a new life and limb. Prepare accordingly.
The Southern Nationalist · October 28, 2025 at 4:05 pm
I can see Mamdani forcing this kind of training on the New York City cops should he win.
BigOlPossum · October 28, 2025 at 9:02 pm
A lifetime ago. I worked as the First Sergeant and training guy for a hospital police force. Still have a bag full of NVCI pins from teaching that. The administration was gung ho for the non-violent part, but it was indeed useless against any true bad guy. I would let the students know my thoughts about the class and would teach a few things not in the book if no brass were around.
I used to arrest and charge anybody who tried to hurt my staff members. Zero tolerance when I was around. Had my share of wrestling matches to let nurses put folks into 4 point restraints. Ativan, Haldol, repeat until the fight is out of them.
One girl I was dating worked that ED. She was an army nurse from Detroit so she would throw down when necessary. She outsmarted me and now we are married. Left the hospital because she kept running into other girls I dated…
Tl/dr: Street fighting works. NVCI generally doesn’t.