Emergency Department Violence Stories

A teen patient treated for an overdose became verbally abusive and threatened destruction to the trauma-bay and harm to the nurses.  He stabilized after two hours of observation and we removed him from the ED. He threatened to shoot all of us from the ambulance bay, where there was no security on duty. 

This sort of thing is a regular occurrence. This is one of my tamer stories. I hope it helps frame the unsafe work environment we enter daily.

- An emergency physician from Michigan