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.
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