00:02Distressed and shocked.
00:04That's how staff were left feeling after an incident at Canberra Hospital last Wednesday
00:09when a patient threatened them with a knife.
00:11No one should ever come to work and have a knife pulled on them
00:15and I think it was really confronting for those staff.
00:17The 35 year old man had just been dropped off by police
00:20at the hospital's behavioural assessment unit when he produced the knife.
00:24While no other patients were in the unit at the time,
00:27eight staff had to seek shelter in a secure room.
00:31They were stuck inside for three hours until police were able to resolve the situation.
00:36Being in the staff station for three hours, they knew they were safe,
00:40but it's still not very pleasant.
00:42Before the incident, staff had raised concerns that there was no way to exit the room
00:47other than going back into the same area.
00:50Staff had raised it as an issue, we were responding to that.
00:53We've had someone come in and have a look at it.
00:56It just so happened that the timing didn't happen before this incident, unfortunately.
01:01When new buildings are being designed, workers should be an integral part of that design process.
01:06And I hope that Canberra Health Services has learned from this
01:09and that as we move towards a new North Canberra Hospital being built,
01:12that workers will play a key role in the design and fit out of that building.
01:17Exactly how the man came to have the knife in the first place is still under investigation.
01:22Police say they did conduct a basic search of him before bringing him to the hospital,
01:28but they say they don't have the ability to strip search a person in situations such as these.
01:33It may be the right direction, but they don't have the best to own the whole shop.
01:33They say they don't have the right direction, but the environment didn't even come out of that.
01:35They were able to get the right direction of each other, and they say they won't have the right direction.
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