Some days ago, a doctor I work with at the hospital assaulted me. He literally carried me and dropped me to the floor. My waist hit the ground, gbam, and he left me there to pick myself up, dust myself off, and continue nursing as though it were normal to do what he had just done.
Let me take it back to the very beginning so you understand how this all started.
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I am a nurse working in one of the public hospitals. That morning, out of the many people who walked through our doors, an older woman was admitted to my ward in the company of her relatives. It was obvious that she could not help herself. I checked her pulse, blood pressure, weight, and every other observation that needed to be done. From my assessment, her condition was deteriorating, and her relatives complained that she had been experiencing difficulty swallowing and poor feeding for the past two weeks.
Our monitor was faulty, but we wheeled her into the ward, checked her baseline vital signs, and settled her onto a properly prepared bed. We then needed to review the patient’s care plan and management, but unfortunately the computer in the ward was not functioning. My shift in charge went to the physician assistant and requested permission to use her phone to take a screenshot of the information from the OPD computer.
I went to follow up with the doctor at the consulting room, but he was attending to another patient, so I left. When I returned later, he was no longer there.
I went to follow up with the doctor at the consulting room, but he was seeing another patient, so I left and returned later only to find he wasn’t there anymore. I eventually tracked him down to the doctor’s common room where he was eating a snack, so I waited patiently. I explained the situation to him, but he refused to document the patient’s care plan on the A4 sheet.
While I was still there, he received a call from the OPD nurse asking him to come and review some requested laboratory investigations on an outpatient basis. After the call ended, I playfully took his phone and placed it behind me before I could speak further.
Before I even understood what was happening, this man lifted me and threw me to the ground.
Flat. Eta shi kpɔ.
I landed on the floor, and after that, and he just walked out while I eventually had to get up and carry out my remaining nursing duties.
I reported the incident to the disciplinary committee, and he apologised. They said we should move past it too and worked hard for the purpose of our patients. Afterwards, he sent me a very long epistle apologising again and quoting a Bible verse. The exact verse he used was Ephesians 4:25.
What makes this whole thing even more difficult to process is that this doctor and I had always been cordial with each other. I respected him professionally, and he respected me, or at least I thought he did. We exchanged greetings every morning. We said hello, good morning, and went about our work. Apart from that, we were simply healthcare coworkers.
Which is why I still struggle to understand how someone I had never had any issues with could decide that, in a moment of anger or frustration, the appropriate response was to physically assault me.
I keep replaying it in my head.
Was I wrong to take his phone? Maybe. Was it unprofessional? Perhaps. But nothing justifies lifting another human being and throwing them to the ground, especially in a hospital where we are entrusted with caring for vulnerable people.
I have spent my career advocating for patients, comforting relatives, and showing up for people on some of the worst days of their lives. I never imagined that one day, I would be the one trying to make sense of violence from a colleague, then expected to continue working as though nothing had happened.
I Called My Girlfriend And Another Man Answered The Phone
My whole body is aching something fierce and the pain is really doing me in. My joints are screaming at me too, and alongside all that physical noise there’s this heavy fear just sitting right in my chest. Then on top of everything, I’m the only one footing my own hill and some days that truth hits so hard it scrambles my thoughts into complete nonsense.
—Aunty Nurse
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