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Frightening incidents of on-the-job violence have many hospitals strengthening security and many nurses are wondering why they've become the preferred target when violence errupts.

The man who attacked her came into the hospital in handcuffs accompanied by seven police officers. That didn't prevent Roseanne Reed, RN, from ending her shift with a battered face and five stitches in her head.

It was about 1 a.m. on a Friday when police escorted the man into the emergency department at Gnaden Huetten Memorial Hospital in northeastern Pennsylvania. The prisoner seemed to be cooperating, and when he asked to use the bathroom, police removed his handcuffs. Reed, who became a nurse in 1973, followed the man and an officer into the bathroom because police asked her to get a urine sample.

When she handed the man a specimen cup, he lashed out.

"He just up and slammed me," Reed said. She still doesn't know why he attacked her.

"When I went down, I hit the wall," Reed said, recounting the incident that occurred in January 2001. "My glasses flew off. I could feel the officers jumping over me to get in. I crawled on my hands and knees to get away."

Later, Reed learned the man had been using cocaine, marijuana and alcohol and had driven through a turnpike tollbooth waving a handgun.

"I didn't know that part of the story," Reed said.

Reed's story could have had a more tragic ending. At Savannas Hospital in Port St. Lucie, Fla., an oak tree planted in the courtyard reminds nurses of colleague Alda Ellington, who was beaten to death by a patient in April 2001.

The man, who fantasized about being a professional wrestler, also killed three elderly patients and injured two others during a violent body-slamming, neck-breaking rampage.

Emergency department and psychiatric nurses have long lived with the possibility of workplace attacks, but they're not the only ones at risk. In October, a student at the University of Arizona College of Nursing in Tucson shot and killed three nursing professors before taking his own life. Less serious but just as frightening incidents of on-the-job violence have many hospitals strengthening security and many nurses wondering why they've become the preferred target when violence erupts.

Easy targets

Between 1993 and 1999, 429,100 nurses were victims of violent crimes in the workplace annually, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics special report. That's an average of 21.9 attacks for every 1,000 nurses. In comparison, physicians experienced 71,300 attacks, or 16.2 for every 1,000 doctors.

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