Attacks a nurse, barricades himself in a room and escapes: high tension at the Brotzu emergency room

Moments of great tension and fear this afternoon at the Emergency Room of the Brotzu hospital in Cagliari, where a patient attacked a nurse and barricaded himself inside the triage room - demanding to be helped by skipping the queue - and then ran away.

Shortly after 4:00 p.m., when there were about twenty other patients in the waiting room of the Emergency Department, a 33-year-old man showed up and immediately showed nervousness and impatience. He asked the nurse if he could be seen immediately, adding that he would need a shot: when the woman in the white coat responded, who had told him to wait a moment for registration, he went into a rage and began to insult her and ask for help.

Afterwards, the thirty-three-year-old locked himself in the triage room and continued to verbally attack the nurse. Only the timely intervention of a security guard, the only one present in the Emergency Room and who had to manage the entire emergency, prevented the situation from degenerating further: he managed to enter the room and calm the patient, who in the meantime had initially attempted a physical attack by throwing trolleys at him, avoiding more serious consequences.

The patient then left the emergency room and ran away. The carabinieri intervened on the scene: the attacker, who was on the run, was not found.

This afternoon's attack at Brotzu is the latest in a long series of verbal and physical attacks against those who work in the emergency room, including doctors, nurses and security personnel called (despite a shortage of staff) every day to manage a significant influx of patients.