Registered nurse suspended after hitting aggressive hospital visitor on the head with umbrella: B.C. college

(Shutterstock)

A B.C. nurse was suspended and faces conditions on their practice after hitting an aggressive hospital visitor over the head with an umbrella, according to their professional college.

The registered nurse reached a consent agreement over the “conduct issues” with the British Columbia College of Nurses and Midwives, and a summary of the document was published online Tuesday.

According to the summary, a hospital visitor behaved erratically and targeted the nurse "with demeaning and aggressive comments and gestures” in fall 2020. The nurse isn't named in the summary and neither is the hospital where the incident happened.

The nurse encountered the visitor and "in an agitated and shaken state, struck him in the head with an umbrella, leaving a mark.”

But that wasn't the nurse's only offence. The summary mentions they also "engaged in volatile communication with or about colleagues on two occasions and interacted twice with colleagues in ways they experienced as either overly familiar or inappropriate."

The unnamed nurse has since taken a course in professionalism and anger management and voluntarily agreed to limits and conditions on their practice. Those conditions include a period of supervision, a limit on working night shifts for six months and a prohibition on supervising students for a year.

The nurse also agreed to have their registration suspended for two months and was reprimanded.

The BCCNM is required by law to regulate nursing in B.C. in cases deemed to be in the public interest. The majority of complaints filed to the college are resolved, as this one was, through a consensual resolution process.

But in some cases, the college will issue a discipline order, rather than an agreement between its committee and the nurse in question.