ER patient charged after security guard stabbed at Winnipeg's Health Sciences Centre

A person who was being treated at Manitoba's largest hospital on Thursday is facing charges after a security guard was stabbed.

Winnipeg police confirm the person is facing charges of assault with a weapon after stabbing the guard at Health Sciences Centre.

"Our violence is through the roof, it happens daily, whether it's verbal abuse ... physical abuse of staff or it's threats of violence," said a hospital staff member, who spoke with CBC News on condition of anonymity due to fear of job repercussions.

"This episode that happened yesterday was quite concerning to everyone in the room."

In recent years there have been several violent incidents at the hospital, including in its emergency room, and staff have spoken out several times about safety concerns.

The latest incident happened as a patient requiring care Thursday became agitated while being treated and things escalated "abruptly," said the HSC staff member.

"[The patient] started threatening staff, a standoff kind of occurred, they started reaching for their pocket, going for what was presumed to be a weapon, and then they were taken down by security and in the process a staff member was stabbed" said the staff member.

The hospital staff member said there were 40 to 50 patients in the emergency room waiting to be seen when the incident unfolded. They said almost half of the emergency department was full of admitted patients waiting for a bed Thursday.

'Safer going to a Jets game'

They said working at the Winnipeg hospital right now is "quite scary," and while weapons-related offences happen infrequently, violence has become the norm.

"I feel safer going to a Jets game when there's police, there's metal detectors. It's kind of scary that that's a better protected space than our largest emergency department in the province," the hospital staff member said.

"It's becoming even more concerning and we're seeing this violence occur in the waiting room and we're seeing patients occasionally be assaulted by other patients as well."

In 2018, the Manitoba Government and General Employees' Union called on the province to give HSC security guards more authority to intervene in violent incidents amid a rise in meth and opioid use and violent incidents.

In 2019, the province announced plans to expand the powers of hospital security guards to give them the ability to detain violent individuals. The legislation came into force in 2021.

But as of last November, the Manitoba Nurses' Union said there had been no change to security guard powers. The union filed a grievance against Shared Health, which co-ordinates health-care delivery in the province, that repeated violence and safety concerns facing nurses at HSC. 

This month, Shared Health said it hadn't yet begun using specialized security guards with expanded powers, called institutional safety officers, because they still needed to hire and train them.

Shared Health had posted 40 of 105 full-time institutional safety officers as of early February that were to be spread across five hospitals. Once hired, those staff would have the power to hold intoxicated people in custody and respond to high-risk incidents.

Jennifer Cumpsty, chief nursing officer at Health Sciences Centre, confirmed a security guard suffered a minor injury in the latest incident.

Cumpsty encouraged staff impacted by the event to utilize the hospital's critical incident stress management resources.

"We also recognize that our efforts to ensure staff feel safe in the workplace must continue, and we look forward to the introduction of institutional safety officers within our facility this spring," Cumpsty said in a statement. 

Cumpsty said the hospital currently has guards at or near entrances to the facility and there is a guard stationed in the emergency room 24/7.

'We need help'

The Health Sciences Centre staff member who spoke to CBC said they would like to see police officers stationed in HSC and metal detectors at hospital entrances.

They said the stabbing could've resulted in someone being killed.

"It certainly could've escalated off that," they said. "I've been hit by patients, I've had people threaten to follow me to my car and stab me."

They said they have faith people in government are trying to make change, but they don't think enough has been done to improve safety.

"People need to know that this is going on because this isn't acceptable. This isn't a hospital issue. This is a government-level issue," they said.

"We need help. I should be able to come into work and feel safe. I shouldn't have to worry about whether or not I am going to go home and see my family afterwards, and we need our patients better protected."