WorkSafe ACT issued safety notices to Canberra Health Services over home visit assaults, citing risk of death. Healthcare unions say nurses are sometimes met with axes, machetes, knives and guns during in home visits. The safety notices have been lifted after CHS implemented the necessary safety procedures.
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00:00Nurses in the capital are in danger.
00:05There are firearms present, guns, bows and arrows.
00:09That danger is not on the ward.
00:12Some nurses have told me that they've pulled knives out of couches.
00:15It's in the homes of Canberrans.
00:17So we've had members who have had the front door opened
00:20and the patient or a family member may be holding a machete
00:25or a knife or an axe, a chain.
00:28So far this year there have been four assaults during home visits.
00:32These are serious assaults that have occurred.
00:34Serious enough to require medical assessment.
00:37We did offer occupational violence leave and that was certainly taken up.
00:40I wasn't surprised but obviously it's awful.
00:46The nursing union says high risk home visits aren't new.
00:50Over many years we have continued to raise safety concerns
00:57which lead to the risk of assaults.
01:02Canberra Health Services says it acknowledges that problems have been raised in the past
01:06and that processes have been adjusted accordingly.
01:09CPSU members at Canberra Health Services have been raising pretty serious safety concerns
01:15about home visits for more than two years now.
01:18In staff meetings, in union meetings, with management all the way up to executive level at CHS
01:24and we weren't getting any traction until WorkSafe came in.
01:28In March, Canberra Health Services, as required by law, reported these serious assaults to the ACT's regulator, WorkSafe.
01:37In reviewing the incidents, it found
01:39the situations resulted in physical and psychological harm to the affected workers
01:44and had serious potential to result in the death of a person.
01:48As part of the assessment, WorkSafe issued seven safety notices to Canberra Health Services
01:53related to home visit protocols.
01:55Among them, it found risk assessments used for home visits were ineffective
01:59and duress alarm systems carried by workers were unreliable and unsafe.
02:04That's the finding of WorkSafe and we don't step away from that at all.
02:08We've taken that on board and that's why we've been working so closely with the regulator to improve our practices.
02:14It shouldn't take a WorkSafe notice to get some action.
02:18Last year, there were 43 instances of occupational violence on Canberra Health Services workers.
02:24Six of those were assaults on nurses or allied health workers delivering care in the home.
02:29Our members love the job they do.
02:31They care about going into the community and delivering really high quality health care services.
02:36We just want workers to be able to go and do their job and come home safely.
02:40Care in the home, but at a cost.