A Nurse Adjusting a Patient’s Oxygen Tube in a Massachusetts Hospital was Stabbed in the Neck near her Carotid Artery By a Patient!

RISKAlert ?#1737???????? ??June 14, 2023 ????????????????Gardner, Massachusetts

A patient receiving care at a Massachusetts hospital cut a nurse in the neck as she tried to adjust his oxygen tube Monday night, prosecutors said at the man's arraignment Tuesday.?The patient, David Nichols, a 76-year-old from Greenville, New Hampshire, was arrested at Heywood Hospital in Gardner after the attack about 8 p.m., Gardner police have said. Nichols was handcuffed to his hospital bed.?

A person speaking on his behalf said Nichols has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer and is on hospice care, having been told he has six months to live. A not guilty plea was entered on his behalf to charges of assault and battery with a deadly weapon and attempting to commit a crime.

The nurse victim is a part of the nursing staff at the hospital, police said, and was taken to University of Massachusetts Memorial Hospital in Worcester to be treated for a laceration. Her condition was not immediately known.

Karen Coughlin, a retired nurse with the Massachusetts Nurse's Association, said she left the profession in part due to concerns about?workplace violence. "My heart goes out to that victim who will not only have to deal with the medical trauma of such an event, but the psychological trauma that these assaults cause," she said. "This is an issue that has become a crisis in our health care facilities within Massachusetts."

Nichols served time for an assault and spent a year in prison for driving under the influence in 1988, prosecutors said, part of a lengthy criminal history.?A judge set bail at $100,000 and ordered that Nichols, who is bed bound, be kept on house arrest, keeping from contacting the alleged victim, if he's released. Nichols is due back in court July 14, 2023.

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