Hazards at work, 39

Australia -- A 48-year-old woman punched a 26-year-old male nurse in the face and repeatedly struck him with her walking stick on December 8, 2003 because she was irate about having to wait for hospital treatment, a court has heard.

The hostile woman wanted to be seen "immediately" when she arrived at the Royal Brisbane Hospital's psychiatric ward about 2:40pm.

However, the woman was left to wait and as the nurse emerged from one of the wards she yelled out "you Scottish bastard". "The complainant had an Irish accent," the prosecutor told the court.

The accused then struck the nurse's face with a clenched fist before repeatedly hitting him with her black walking cane as if it were a baseball bat. She was yelling obscenities ... he was walking backwards trying to stop the blows, calling for security.

He was fearful because she wouldn't stop. She was eventually brought to the ground before others helped restrain her.

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Pooper scooper

Here's the kind of strength a person - any person really - can have "on full tilt". I've witnessed it in psychiatric patients - this 47-year-old woman was allegedly under influence of crack cocaine.
So the expression "size doesn't matter" is true then? To some extent, yes. It is quite a dangerous assumption to believe that someone is harmless because he or she is small!
This story also points to the amount of resistance we are all able to muster if we have to fight for our life - real or perceived.

Story:
It took five police officers, three hits with a Taser gun, leg straps and a spit bag to subdue a 5-foot tall, 105-pound woman who entered a Waukesha home and attacked a couple she didn't know with a metal pooper scooper and scissors, authorities said.

With a scissors in each hand, she fought the 6-foot, 210-pound homeowner. He said that he couldn't believe the woman's strength.

When the first officer arrived, the attacker was foaming at the mouth and struggling with the homeowner, the complaint says. She continued to fight the officer who used a Taser gun, but it appeared to have no effect on her. More and more officers were called to assist, and she was stunned with the Taser two more times.
Using their combined weight, five officers were finally able to subdue the woman enough to take her to hospital to check her for injuries.

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Patient to go to prison

Here's more on violence at work. There's - sometimes inevitably- a lot of it in psychiatric wards...

Story:
State officials on Friday crafted a solution that paves the way for Todd Van Dorn to move from a psychiatric ward at the Oregon State Hospital to a prison cell in the Oregon Department of Corrections.

Friday's new developments came after state hospital workers expressed outrage this week about Van Dorn's case. On Tuesday, Van Dorn was sentenced to almost six years in prison for beating hospital staff member Valerie Aerni in December 2004.

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