Early backs bill for increased penalties

By Noah R. Bombard

When Judy Smith-Goguen became a nurse, she did so to help others. But in 1999, while working at an UMass adolescent facility in Westboro, she was the one who needed help.

A female patient in restraints — to prevent her from doing harm to herself or others — got her wrist free. She grabbed Smith-Goguen by the hair and repeatedly smashed her head into a cement wall and then continued to push her down, Smith-Goguen recalls. It took several male staff members to free Smith-Goguen and restrain the patient.

Smith-Goguen suffered a scalp laceration and upper neck and shoulder injuries. She was unable to work for three months, went to physical therapy and counseling to try to cope with the stress and anxiety of the attack. She ended up transferring to the UMass University Campus here in Worcester — who could blame her?

"I was fearful of going back to work and getting hurt again," she says.

If this sounds like a rare and horrible encounter for one nurse, it isn't. In fact, "It's commonplace," says Worcester District Attorney Joseph Early Jr., who took a trip to Boston to testify at the State House hearing last week on a bill to increase criminal penalties for assaulting nurses.

Just how violent can nursing be? According to the U.S. Department of Labor, nurses and other personal care workers suffer assaults at the rate of 12 times other industries.

"Fifty percent of all nurses and personal care workers have been punched within two years," Early says, quoting a 2004 survey of Massachusetts nurses. "Each day [nationwide] more than 9,000 nurses or health care workers are injured or verbally or physically assaulted on the job."

But when it comes to punishing those who decide to take it out on the nurse, penalties lag behind similar assaults on other professionals. In fact, in 1989, the Legislature passed a bill creating mandatory 90-day jail sentences for anyone assaulting an EMT or ambulance driver — nurses were left off the list. The new bill would add them and other personal care workers.

"If you assault a nurse or front-line staff, there are going to be repercussions," Smith-Goguen says. "There's not going to be any fooling around anymore."

Early says he doesn't buy the argument that patients on medication or with psychiatric problems should be given some leniency.

"I don't believe it's a blanket excuse," he says.

Smith-Goguen, who has been a strong vocal proponent of the bill, also argues that although her assault occurred in a psychiatric facility, assaults occur in large percentages on other wards as well, with high numbers in emergency rooms especially, but also in operating rooms. These attacks are perpetrated by not only patients, but by family members, visitors and occasionally other hospital workers, she says.

"They're the ones who show us the compassion when we come in through the front door. We have the duty to show them the same type of compassion," Early says. o