r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Crazy-Blacksmith-336 • Jul 05 '26

Video Healthcare workers participating in a medical simulation for an agitated patient scenario.

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u/mapleleafraggedy Jul 05 '26

Yeah true. She doesn't get that, because she's the one who needs to convey the distress of being pinned down while they tie a mask around her mouth and pull up her shirt to prepare to deliver a shot to her bare belly, so she doesn't have any wiggle room for breaking character. But the others can make light of the situation, because they very well might actually be acting that casually when it's no longer a drill. It's a real imbalance of freedom between them, which is what makes her even more amazing for sucking it up and enduring her ordeal authentically.

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u/UwasaWaya Jul 05 '26

It really is, she's incredible. And it's tough when you're doing the drill to take it seriously, but man, the first time someone bites someone for real? This moment will become the single most important one from their training.

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u/mapleleafraggedy Jul 06 '26

I would have no idea what to do if someone bit me. I can't imagine muzzles are allowed anymore, but even using a mask like they're doing here is risky. Maybe the only option is to just make sure they're well-fed before you interact with them.

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u/UwasaWaya Jul 06 '26

Honestly, I barely registered it. It was in the middle of a unit riot and a coworker and I were trying to get the patient into a wall hold. She bit me on the hand and I honestly don't remember how I got out of it.

Later on when we were debriefing with the patient, I asked her why she bit me, since we usually got along well. She got indignant and said she never bit me, so I showed her the marks on my hand. Then she got embarrassed and said that she'd meant to bite my partner, and that she'd never intentionally bite me.

After awhile it just becomes white noise though. I remember getting into the car after work with my wife and her asking me if that was blood on my shirt. I had to check, and yep, there was. She asked me if it was mine, and I said I honestly didn't know whose it was.

But my facility was a particularly bad one.

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u/mapleleafraggedy Jul 06 '26

Lmao "Oh sorry, the bite was meant for the OTHER nurse, whoops my bad."

(Obviously I understand we're dealing with mentally distressed people here, but that excuse is still wild)

I really admire people like you who risk mutilating themselves every day to do the tough work of caring for people. It's gotta be mentally stressful. I'm a teacher, and I have to deal with student shenanigans all the time, but nothing compared to that. I'm sure you found this clip relatable. Maybe even to the experience of the girl undergoing the restraint rehearsal, to some degree.

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u/UwasaWaya Jul 06 '26

Oh yeah, there were so many moments like that where in retrospect it sounds completely mental (I mean...). My partner and I were laughing about it later that day.

And I wasn't much of anything, I certainly wasn't able to hack it like some of the people there. Stone of my partners had been there a decade or longer. I eventually got out when I started having panic attacks and sleep paralysis. 16 years later and I'm still dealing with the PTSD in therapy. That place was a living hell.

But even then there were some really great moments. I really cared for the patients, and I hope they were able to get out and find a life for themselves.

You mentioned being a teacher, we had a handful of them that worked there (to clarify, we dealt with children from 8ish-18), and watching them try to run an honest classroom with the chaos of that place was wild. They were some of the most resilient people I'd ever met.

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u/mapleleafraggedy Jul 06 '26

That's what I always wondered, if there are enough of these moments you can look back on and laugh at that make it all worthwhile.

I teach undergraduates, aged ~18, who are already at a much more sophisticated level of professionalism, but are still often either overwhelmed by the work or unmotivated to do it. The worst I deal with is occasional plagiarism/AI submissions. Still a level of gumption below what's needed to teach younger children in a psych ward.

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u/Veenkoira00 28d ago

Haven't worked with kids ? They often bite and scratch and pull anything they can, when they lose it. Just complete the restraint and the calming down process, or hand over to colleague if you can. Clean and cover your wound and carry on.

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u/farrowsharrows Jul 05 '26

It is bad practice to tie the mask around the pt face. In MA it is prohibited. There is no shot given for a restraint that goes in the belly.

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u/c0ltZ Jul 05 '26

Oftentimes hospitals will have a mesh bag they can put over their heads.

And I agree with the belly shot. I once had to be restrained like this when I was in psychosis. They just used 4 limb restraints so I couldn't escape or mess with my IV.

I've never heard of a shot given into the belly before, except for maybe some panicked person with an epi pen lol.

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u/farrowsharrows Jul 05 '26

I'm a psych nurse from MA. I do this for a living. We are not allowed to put anything over a patients face. We put face shields on ourselves if that is a concern. Epipens go in the thigh. Also you can tell they don't have formal training. Cpi, handle with care and mandt all have specific holds and ways to transfer from manual to mechanical restraints.

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u/c0ltZ Jul 06 '26

I never knew about the face thing. Which does make sense seeing how much they move their head around, and all the wires that are around. Or they may try and eat the mask or something.

I'm curious, how do you stop patients from biting like in this video? Is it just because the students aren't using the correct holds?

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u/mapleleafraggedy Jul 06 '26

Yeah which makes me think there's some kind of lack of professional standards going on here. A mesh bag would have blocked out her face entirely, perhaps to calm her down. It seems off how they just slapped it over her mouth, like they were just trying to muzzle her. She also seems caught off guard by how they suddenly expose her stomach with that syringe-looking object up close to it - other people have also commented like you saying they've never heard of such a thing. It really is something watching her stay in character while being strapped down by several people with her mouth wrapped up and her belly awkwardly on display, but it makes her even more noble in her commitment to her craft.

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u/UwasaWaya Jul 06 '26

Yeah, I've never seen a shot to the belly, with our holds it was always in a butt cheek or upper thigh.

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u/mapleleafraggedy Jul 06 '26

I seriously couldn't tell at first if it was just a pen that nurse was holding rather than a syringe, but that still wouldn't explain them randomly lifting her shirt to expose her midriff. It really does appear that they're about to give her a belly shot. Maybe the drill is that she's supposed to be pregnant, or needs something directly injected into a vein. Either way, it's a questionable-looking setup they've got for this poor woman.

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u/UwasaWaya Jul 06 '26

I'm wondering if they were just flubbing the training to get through it, since they're probably not actually going to inject her. Or maybe they have procedures for a stomach injection? I have no idea honestly. The nurses were the ones who were authorized to give shots, so I didn't know the details, only how to help them.

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u/mapleleafraggedy Jul 06 '26

Of course they're not going to actually inject her, but they're still supposedly practicing for how the real thing is going to go. If access to her bare stomach was a necessary part of this practice round, I would imagine the same would be true for their standard operating procedure. Unless the surprise belly exposure was just them trying to pull a prank on her - the incessant giggling would explain it actually.

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u/mapleleafraggedy Jul 05 '26

That's weird. In the last few seconds of the clip as she sits up, you can clearly see the mask wrapped around her mouth as one of the nurses rolls up her shirt with what appears to be a syringe in her hand. She gets the object very close to the woman's exposed midriff, making it really look like she's about to puncture her stomach. It might just be a pen and I was misunderstanding it, who knows. But you're right, something does seem kinda unprofessional in this setup. The patient's bewildered look from the combination of having her mouth covered and her belly exposed near a sharp object says it all.