The charges stemmed from a January 2014 incident where a patient allegedly attacked a nurse at CAMH, dragging her, kicking her and beating her.
The
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health pleaded guilty Monday to a
workplace safety charge related to the 2014 beating of a nurse by a
patient that reportedly left the victim “beyond recognition.”
Justice Robert Bigelow ordered the hospital to pay an $80,000 fine.
The Ontario Ministry of Labour laid four charges against the hospital in December 2014
following a Jan. 12, 2014, incident in which a patient allegedly
dragged, kicked and beat a CAMH nurse who was conducting hourly rounds.
CAMH
pleaded guilty to violating the Occupational Health and Safety Act by
failing to develop, establish and put in place measures and procedures
to protect the health and safety of workers. The three other charges
were withdrawn by the ministry.
According
to an agreed statement of facts read out in court by Crown attorney Line
Forestier, the nurse was doing a round at 11 p.m. when a male patient
pushed her to the ground from behind and began kicking her.
The victim could not activate her body-worn alarm, a device known as a “screamer,” or a wall-mounted alarm during the attack.
Two
other nurses heard the commotion and went to investigate; one tried to
stop the patient while the other ran back to the nursing station to call
police. The nurse who stayed behind couldn’t stop the patient but got
the victim to her feet. Both ran towards the station, but the patient
caught up to them and continued the assault; the nurse fought him off
with a chair before she and the victim entered the safety of the nursing
station.
Toronto police arrived and
arrested the patient for assault. The Star was unable to learn whether
the patient was charged in the incident.
The
attack left the victim with a fractured eye socket, lacerations to the
face and head and wrist and back injuries, Forestier said. She was also
diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression and has
been unable to return to work.
The nurse
who came to the victim’s aid suffered an injury that causes her chronic
back pain and has also been diagnosed with PTSD, Forestier added. She,
too, has been unable to return to work.
The
patient had previously attacked a nurse at another facility in 2010,
Forestier said. The nurse in that case required neural surgery. In 2013,
the patient reported hearing voices telling him to harm staff but
showed no intention of acting on the voices, and gave “no warning” the
day of the attack.
The layout of the unit,
which does not allow an unobstructed view, the dim lighting during
night shifts and that nurses are not required to do patrols in pairs all
hindered employee safety, Forestier said.
The
ministry requested a fine of $100,000 to send “a clear message” that
workplace violence, whether in the public or private sector, was not
acceptable.
Representing CAMH, attorney
Robert Little agreed that the attack was “very unfortunate” but said a
fine of $70,000 was more in line with other hospital fines. Little
pointed out that before the attack, the patient had scored zero out of
seven on a violence assessment scale and also said it was “entirely
speculative” to say paired patrols would have prevented the attack.
Following
the decision, Danielle Latulippe-Larmand, president of the Ontario
Nurses’ Association bargaining unit at CAMH, said she was happy that
CAMH pleaded guilty but was disappointed with the fine. She said the
hospital should be focusing on preventing violence instead of reacting
to it.
“We should be able to go to work and go back home the same way we looked when we walked into work,” she said.
Nancy
Pridham, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union
bargaining unit at CAMH, agreed. She criticized the use of “screamers,”
which depend on having someone around to hear the alarm going off, and
said better systems that immediately alert 911 need to be implemented.
“We
recognize that putting the kinds of measures we need in place is
expensive, but in order to ensure that there’s no staff that ends up the
way the staff have ended up at CAMH, we think the money is worth it,”
she said. “We think that our lives are worth it.”
Pridham
and Latulippe-Larmand both said they thought the hospital should have
been fined the maximum amount allowed by law — $500,000 per charge.
In
a statement, CAMH’s chief of nursing, Dr. Rani Srivastava, said the
hospital accepts the court’s decision and that the incident had a
“devastating impact” on “all of us at CAMH.”
“We deeply regret that we failed to meet our obligations for workplace safety, and that our valued staff members were injured.”
This
is not the first time CAMH has been fined for violating the
Occupational Health and Safety Act. In 2009, the hospital was fined
$70,000 after, in separate incidents, one nurse was punched by a patient
and another was molested.
