Travel Nurse's Facebook Post About 10-Hour Patient Assault Goes Viral, Spreading Awareness

Imagine going to school for 2-4 years, studying around the clock, giving up sleep and a social life, working diligently to earn a degree to become a licensed healthcare professional — only to be left worrying if today would be the day you'd be physically assaulted on the job when you finally graduate. 

For many Registered Nurses, especially those working in hospitals and facilities, the fear of being physically assaulted, injured, and seriously hurt is a reality they face every single time they start their shifts. National Nurses United's 2023 report on nurse violence shows that a shocking 8 out of 10 nurses have experienced workplace violence while on the job.

Janiece's Story

For Janiece Jones, BSN, RN, an ICU/stepdown travel nurse from Jacksonville, Florida, that fear came true. In 2023, Jones says she was assaulted by a patient she cared for while on assignment. Now, even years later, she's still fighting for justice.

Jones' story was shared by a local news station in 202, and Jones also shared her story on Facebook after seeing other nurses share their trauma.

She tells Nurse.org that although she did press charges against the patient, she was told by the Memphis Police Department that he was originally arrested but then released due to his medical conditions. 

Despite trying for years to file a lawsuit about the incident, Jones adds that lawyers in Memphis will not take the case. 

She says that she received no workmen's compensation during the months she was off after the assault because the manager and HR claimed they didn't have a "light duty" position available, which she says meant workmen's compensation would not pay her. 

The Assault

In a Facebook post and via an interview with Nurse.org, Jones shared her experience of a patient assault while working as a travel nurse in the stepdown unit. Jones says that she had been on assignment for 5 months when the assault happened and that the patient she had been assigned to care for, whom she dubbed "Blue," had a "long extensive history of being violent towards the nurses."

According to Jones, the patient had been intubated because he was both "violent" and had a medical condition. The patient was transferred to her on stepdown, where she was caring for other challenging patients. Upon receiving report, Jones learned that Blue had assaulted the night shift nurse as well, but that nurse was too scared of losing her job to report anything. 

Jones wrote that Blue was fully "in his right mind" without any psych or mental health issues, but while caring for him for a full 10 hours in an isolation room, she endured assaults that she claims included:

• Hitting her in the chest
• Squeezing her arms while she attempted to flush his IV line
• Stating, “ I know I’m going to hell and you coming with me.” 
• Spitting in her face
• Throwing his feces at her 
• Telling her he knew he was going to die and "he’s trying to take me with him" 
• Bending her fingers back
• Making violent threats
• Trying to bite her fingers

Calls For Help

Compounding the problem, Jones says that there was no assigned charge nurse for her unit available for her that day. She attempted to protect herself by calling the nurse educator and a charge nurse from ICU to come in the room while she attempted patient care like providing him water, feeding him, changing his bed sheets, and administering medications. 

"Actually the charge nurse told me to watch out and duck because he seen him trying to spit in my face when I was simply trying to empty the urine out of his foley bag," Jones wrote in her Facebook post. "They witnessed him trying to bend my fingers back. They listened to the volient threats. Trying to bite my fingers while im tryinf to flush is IV line and give medications. The list goes on! I notified the doctor, manager, risk management and Human Resources." 

The Aftermath

Jones told Nurse.org that she feels the situation wasn't handled appropriately at even a basic level. A simple, 'Are you okay?' goes a long way," she said. 

Instead, she says she was quizzed on what she did or could have done to de-escalate the situation with the patient. To that end, Jones says she feels the hospital failed to implement protocols to prevent violent incidents as such. 

Travel Nurses Unfair Treatment

She also points out that the culture of nursing can predispose nurses to face unsafe incidents that could leave them vulnerable. For instance, she told Nurse.org that travel nurses are often floated to areas that aren't their specialty and assigned the high-acuity, total care, and "unsafe" patients. 

"Some of the staff nurses feel like since we make more money than them, we should get the harder more unsafe assignments," she notes. "This is known worldwide in the culture of nursing how some staff nurses feel and how travelers are treated."

Jones says travel nurses are also sometimes threatened with being reported to the Board of Nursing for challenging an assignment they feel is unsafe. 

"For instance, on one assignment, I refused an assignment because the Director of Nursing (DON) wanted me to take three patients who were all on ventilators, all on Levophed and other critical drips such as Propofol," she explains. "To add, for example, the patients were spaced in rooms 1, 9, and 22. There’s absolutely no way I could safely take care of those patients. I was threatened with being reported to the board of nursing for abandonment if I didn’t take report." 

Jones claims that despite what she endured and what the ICU charge nurse witnessed, she was offered no assistance, even to change her clothes. 

"Do you think they replaced me with another nurse? NO. Why? Because the nurses told me they were afraid to take him and didnt want to get hurt," she wrote on Facebook, "They didn’t offer for me to go home, Change clothes, go to a decontamination room or anything. Why? Because they couldnt find a nurse who would cover me. If I left without giving report to another nurse, it’s called abandonment and you'll lose your nursing license."

After her shift was over, she says she faced obstacles trying to report the incident. Jones claims the hospital ER refused care for her because they said it fell under workmen's compensation and "it would be committing fraud to use my own insurance."

To receive any type of care, she needed a hospital incident report, which she says took the hospital 7-8 days to write. Jones pointed out that some diseases, such as HIV and Rabies, have a 48-72 preventative dose window, so the hospital's delayed incident report prevented her from receiving any preventative care. She says the hospital also ran a urine drug screen on her, which came back negative—but then the hospital elected to re-run it days later and claimed the second test had drugs, so she needed to be put on suspension. 

"My first urine same came back negative. Days later, another drug screen came back positive. I never gave a new urine sample," Jones wrote. "I didn't know companies keep urine for that long."

Be Kind To Nurses

According to paperwork she posted on Facebook, Jones' medical conditions include "coccyx pain" and a "R knee injury" and she told Nurse.org that she has long-lasting impacts from the assault. "I'm still paying the medical bills now out of my own pocket," Jones ended her Facebook post.

While she has faced challenges after the incident, Jones tells Nurse.org that she wants the world to see her story and bring awareness to "what it's like to be a nurse."

"Nursing isn’t just an aesthetic," she adds. "We are overworked, burned out, underpaid, understaffed, abused, undervalued, and unappreciated. I want to be a part of a stepping stone for other nurses who’ve been abused to come forth and tell their story. We stand in solidarity." 

Jones also issued a challenge to others who may think that workplace violence is just part of the job for nurses. 

"To the world, answer this question: If you hit your spouse, coworker, stranger, and police are called, what will happen to you?" Jones poses. "If you were to hit a policeman or law enforcement? What will happen to you? Yet when a patient hits a nurse, we are always reprimanded and asked what could we have done differently in the situation?"

"Be kind to your nurse," she says. "I always tell people I’m human first and a nurse second."

Hospital Statement

Nurse.org contacted the hospital for a statement and will update this article if one is received. The hospital provided the following statement to local news in 2023:

"Since COVID-19, there has been a rise in violence against healthcare workers around the country. As a healthcare institution committed to caring for every patient who enters our facilities, we have processes in place to help ensure the safety of our employees, physicians, patients and visitors. Anytime a staff member expresses concerns about safety, we take swift and immediate action. We do not tolerate violence of any kind and expect everyone on our campuses to treat each other with respect and dignity to ensure a safe and healing environment for all."

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