Jabberwocky
Frumious Bandersnatch
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A VIOLENT ice addict who left a nurse with permanent brain damage was kept unconscious for eight days in a Sydney hospital because staff were too frightened to treat him.
Nurses and security guards were forced to hold down the 38-year-old Blue Mountains timber worker with eight restraints — two for each limb — and knocked him out using “all the Valium in the hospital”, a source said.
Staff are now threatening to walk of the job unless he is moved to Cumberland Hospital or Long Bay Correctional Centre. “Someone will get killed sooner or later,” a staff member, who did not want to be named, said.
Acting Sgt Luke Warburton, injured at Nepean Hospital in January, recovers with wife Sandra Warburton. Picture: NSW Police Media
“He has already given a nurse at Cumberland Hospital permanent brain damage and broken another patient’s femur. He’s too much of a risk.”
An internal hospital briefing document described the man as “extremely high risk of violence and assault”. “The patient has a very long forensic history and had assaulted many people in the community, including nursing staff in hospital while he was an inpatient in the past,” it said.
The man, who has an extensive criminal history and mental health problems, had been repeatedly admitted to Nepean and Hornsby hospitals over the past eight weeks.
Just weeks before he was restrained, the man is alleged to have flipped a hospital bed in Nepean’s emergency department and threatened to kill staff and patients.
He was sedated on March 27 after again threatening staff and came out of the Nepean ICU on Tuesday, where he has since been housed in the Western Sydney hospital’s mental health high dependency unit.
Staff were forced to close beds in the unit to protect other patients.
“The management is not looking after staff,” the hospital source said. “It is not right to have him in this hospital where lives are being threatened. He should never have come into this hospital in the first place. My colleagues are so distressed because they fear for their lives.”
A crisis meeting was held on Tuesday to brief nurses and security guards on how to deal with the man. “Staff are trying to do their best but they can’t speak up, if you do your job is at risk,” the staff member said.
Nepean Blue Mountains Local Health District chief executive Kay Hyman denied staff would be sacked if they refused to treat the patient.
Another ice-affected patient at Nepean Hospital shot security guard Barry Jennings, 48, and Senior Constable Luke Warburton on January 12. Both men survived. The shooting forced the government to order a security audit of 20 hospital emergency departments.
The number of ice-affected people admitted to NSW hospitals increased more than sevenfold between 2009 and 2014.
Source: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/ne...89eda8574e34d0da79b92348b#load-story-comments
