District nurses demand safety measures after seeing patients with knives and guns

District and community nurses have called for urgent national standards for lone working in healthcare after encountering patients with weapons.

A debate held at the annual Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Congress this week heard how safety measures across the UK are inconsistent, with some nurses lacking basic protection like personal alarms or tracking technology.

Two district nurses spoke about their separate experiences dealing with patients in the community, one of whom had a shotgun in their home and the other who kept knives in their hotel room.

Vice chair of the RCN’s health and safety reps committee Andrew Mather introduced a resolution to congress, held this week in Liverpool, calling on the RCN to lobby the government for the implementation of national safety standards for lone working.

The aim is to ensure access to appropriate safety equipment, technology and protocols to protect staff across all care settings.

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Speaking about his experience, district nurse Adam Newton said he had no personal equipment, no alarms, and no way of tracking his colleagues.

‘I went to see a farmer in the middle of nowhere. What’s in this house? There at the side, there was a shotgun, a loaded shotgun.

‘He was very angry that someone should have come the day before, he was really angry and I thought, “he’s going to shoot my brains out here.”’

The police had to be called but when a colleague visited a second time, the shotgun was still there.

‘This is a danger you go into when you work in the community, you’ll know you never know what you’re going to walk into,’ he said.

RCN District Nursing Forum member Marie Rogers spoke of a similar experience of a patient in possession of knives.

She said the situation was ‘unacceptable’ for nurses and they need to be guaranteed safety equipment, resilient technology, and protocols that do not ‘vary wildly between employers’.

She said: ‘We provided care to a person in a hotel who, due to their vulnerability and criminal background, kept knives on site for protection.

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‘There was no prior warning, and the police were not aware, and limited support was available to the team.

‘This is why we need national standards for lone working, not guidance. District nurses, community nurses, social care nurses, and care staff get openly through doors – often alone – to deliver care to people in one of the most vulnerable moments of their lives.

‘They do this because compassionate and person-centred care belongs in communities and homes, not only in hospitals.’

Community and district nurse Leila Smith added that ‘safety should be a right, not a request’.

‘In any other job, [we] wouldn’t allow women to go into a stranger’s home on their own with no backup, yet we do that every day for our community nurses. It’s not on,’ she said.

‘We can’t keep doing the same thing. We need to do something different.’

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Nurses voted to approve the resolution, with proposer Mr Mather concluding that safety protocols for lone working is not ‘negotiable’.

‘This motion does not ask for the impossible,’ he said. ‘It asks for what should already exist… national standards applied across all sectors, across all UK nations, and across all employers.

‘Employers have a duty of care to identify and manage risks associated with lone working. Safety is not optional.’