long post:
I’m a male nurse and 3 days ago, my female colleagues had to deal with an asocial, violent family: the patient’s daughter, her very big and tall husband and 4 other family members that weren’t that aggressive, but said nothing and did nothing to stop the violent family members.
Cardiac unit, they wanted to take the patient for a walk, except that the patient was under monitoring, meaning you cannot.
The nurse in charge, a small woman told the family they couldn’t take the patient out of the unit and the daughter and her husband lost it. Literally. They turned to pure karen mode, started yelling and insulting my colleague, words I’m not going to repeat but it was very denigrating and happened repeatedly, like they were trying to elicit an aggressive response from my colleague so they would have an excuse to get physical, they got 3 inches off her face, the man told her in a very aggressive way he would be waiting for her when she finishes her shift, the woman told her if her father dies, she would hunt her down, also insulted her some more.
All my colleague did was telling them that the patient is under monitoring and cannot leave the unit. My colleague tried to calmly repeat the same line another 2 times, but these 2 people just wouldn’t listen, they started being that aggressive directly.
Security was called, but they never reached the unit on time, cops were not called, a doctor was called as well who came running, repeated what my colleague said, the doctor informed the family the patient could leave against medical advice, the patient refused, the family left, complaining about my colleague, didn’t apologize to her, my colleague needed 30 minutes alone to cry.
Now I’m a male and I have no idea how to react, should that happen during my shift. I have the feeling my female colleagues expect me to intervene, because I’m a man, but I’m not a strong person and I don’t know how to react when an intimidating and aggressive, bigger man than could easily punch me unconscious tells me 3 inches from my face he is going to wait for me when I finish my shift.
I have thought about several scenarios:
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I simply say ‘I’ll call the doctor’, disengage, call security, call the police saying I fear for my security and for my patients’ security and ignore them till they come. Then I tell security and the cops to escort the violent family from the unit. Document. Call the union.
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I confront the violent family: ‘Im not gonna talk to you unless you behave like an adult, call me when you’re ready to do that’. I disengage, call security and the cops and ask for them to come silently because, even though there is no violence, the situation can escalate very quickly and unpredictably and I fear for my safety, my coworkers’ safety and that of my patients. Document, call the union.
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I try calming the violent family: 'calm down, you don’t let me talk, repeat that twice at most. If they don’t behave, I stop engaging, call security and the cops, because I fear for my safety. Document, call the union.
I also don’t know what could I say or do if they keep pestering and goading me when I disengage. Do I try to ignore that? Tell them to stop, looking them in the eye? Repeat ‘I’ll only talk to you when you act like an adult? Repeat ‘leave me alone’? Say ‘I don’t want any trouble with you, but if you attack me I’m going to defend myself?
I also need help to stay safe for the 10 minutes our internal security sometimes need to reach our unit and whatever time the police needs to reach us. Do I make the aggressive person focus on me so my female coworkers are safer? Do I ignore them? This must be one of the creepiest experiences a person has to live.
thank you for your help
Now, I have the benefit of being a tall man. That said…
In my experience emotionally compromised people cannot be dealt with in a “correct” way. People get high strung for a variety of reasons and will go looking for a fight without reasoned thought ever being involved. It doesn’t help that there are a lot of people out there in need of anger management skills they do not have.
Doing that anger management for them, is impossible at best.
All you can do is your best to keep anything that matters out of the firing line. Your colleagues, your patient, yourself, your job. Being at a disadvantage when it comes to size, physical strength, authority, experience with such situations, makes this much, much harder.
It’s difficult to say how much success someone else might have with it, but I like to answer implied threats like the ones you mentioned with feigned confusion. In reply to “I’m gonna be waiting for you later” I might reply “no need, we can talk this through right now, I am ready to answer all your questions as best I can”. This is somewhat passive-aggressive, but the intention is to refuse to acknowledge or entertain that there is a possibility of the situation escalating beyond civil behaviour (although it already has). By behaving as if their outburst was a reasonable thing to say, you also allow them to save face, but doing so without coming across condescending is an acquired skill. For me, acting just dumb enough to have them wondering if I’m even capable of saying one thing while intending another has proven most defusing.
In all but the worst cases, such implied threats are a desperate effort to force one’s will. If someone actually throws a punch, that will immediately make them the aggressor in the eyes of any observer, which in a civilized setting is total self-sabotage. People want to feel as if they are in control, and usually, people know that turning to violence is an admission of already losing it, and an attempt to regain it using underhanded means. Hence the implied threat of violence, instead of actual violence. At least for a start, if a person is backed into a corner using words, they may lash out physically exactly because they feel they must regain control at all costs.
If there’s a way to effectively de-escalate, it’s often only possible to identify by intuition, and an attempt to execute may as likely set off another fuse. But usually it involves appealing to something the person out of control cares about, something that throws them off the track of hot rage and onto something calmer. Instead of “you are scaring me” you might say “you are scaring your family”. But, when even people experienced with the person in question are at a loss and are doing nothing, the behaviour is either an exception they’ve not dealt with before, or the norm, which they’ve no clue what to do about.
When dealing with groups of irate people, there’s a bit of mob mentality involved. If there’s no clear “head” on the mob it can be quite easy to give it one, by asking only one of the people in the group a question, or forcing them to organize with something like “I can’t hear all of you at once”.
But you can’t talk down a storm. The best way is to find shelter and wait, give the person out of control time to sit with their thoughts and let them spin down as they tire out. If a group is involved they can talk each other up and get even more mad, so if you have a way to prevent them from speaking to each other for a bit, use it, let their trains of thought diverge even a little and they’ll have to put energy into coming back to agreement. Rage burns calories like few other things. It’s possible to do these things while standing right there, but it’s difficult and seldom more than an unnecessary risk.
If you feel that closure is important (and possible), a calm moment much, much later, is the best time IMO.
If the person seems the type to accept some calm words once their head has cooled, not hold a grudge (and are still within speaking distance), I make an effort to achieve some kind of a reconciliation. Something like “I realize you had a lot on your mind at the time, and felt things that aren’t meant to be controlled, but the way you behaved insert situation was not fair. It made the situation worse, and added to everyone else’s burden. I would like you to apologize in some way to insert relevant parties, they were deeply affected by having to deal with this.” Being too “blamey” can spark a hot guilt that flames into another outburst, so I try to allow them to save as much face as I can stomach. Besides, a forced apology is no apology at all.
Again, it can depend, but I like to go with treating their behaviour as somewhat inevitable, and that making up for it now is the logical next phase. Not all people are open to feedback on their character, and how to grow. Even people who are, can still get pissed when told off, before privately coming around while mulling it over, long after parting with you.
Even if the offender learns nothing, getting an apology out of them can do a lot for the people they hurt, and is worth some effort as long as they are likely to never have to deal with the same individual again.
If no apology occurs. Voice your discontent, even if only to the party that most deserves an apology. Such solidarity does wonders to quell the self-doubt a situation like this can provoke. The target of their ire, the female nurse in your experience, is likely to be asking herself how she could have dealt with the situation better. Even if she could have, it’s a travesty that she was forced into a situation where such skills would have been useful. She did not put herself there, the patients family did. In general, discussing such experiences with your peers can be extremely cathartic and helpful.
When it comes to whether you should pull the heat onto yourself to keep it off others, here I don’t agree. When someone is “under attack” and I feel I could help, I try to “join” the fight, not “take over”. A joint front is three times as strong as one of two fighting alone. If you pull all the heat onto yourself, you’ll still be just one person against a storm. An individual is easy to single out, even if that individual is swapped out for another. But being angry at two people at the same time, takes twice the effort at least.
By all means, step in to take a punch someone else cannot. But when it comes to words, we all hurt the same, and taking them together halves the pain.