MacInnis said the thought that her life was in danger never occurred to her until after the situation was under control. "Then it sort of hit me," she said, "And I fell apart."
Nurses are often on the receiving end of physical assaults, because they are typically the first and most frequent medical personnel by the bedside of ill and sometimes angry or frustrated patients.
Emergency rooms seem to be the hot spots for violent assaults, according to experts interviewed for this article, but general practice nurses are not immune.
Fifty percent of nurses surveyed by the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) -- a union of registered nurses -- and the University of Massachusetts said they had been punched at least once in a two-year period. Some reported being strangled, sexually assaulted or stuck with contaminated needles.
In the past, the biggest problems reported by nurses had to do with back injuries or work related asthma, but that's changed, said Evelyn Bain, head of the MNA's Occupational Health and Safety Office.
"Workplace violence has really just been head and shoulders above that," said Bain.
It's not just a problem in Massachusetts. A national survey, conducted last year by the Emergency Nurses Association, a national association for emergency room nurses, found 86 percent of its nurses reported being a victim of workplace violence during the prior three years; 19 percent said it happened frequently. Watch how nurses cope with violent patients
Boston-area psychiatric emergency room nurse Karen Coughlin said she was forced to restrain a disturbed female patient who had fashioned a switchblade-like knife out of a harmonica. Another time she had to fight off an aggressive, violent male patient.
"He had gone after me," she said. "I really thought he was going to kill me."
This became almost routine, she said.
"I've been punched, I've been kicked, I've been spit at," she added.
