Royal Ottawa seeks acquittal in violent 2012 attack

Lawyers for the Royal Ottawa Health Care Group are asking a justice of the peace to acquit the hospital on charges it violated health and safety legislation in connection with a violent “Code White” incident in 2012.

Defence lawyer Stephen Bird asked for the directed verdict Wednesday at the end of evidence by the prosecutor for the Ontario Ministry of Labour.

The charges stem from an attack on staff by a schizophrenic patient in the hospital’s recovery unit on July 5, 2012. One nurse was choked unconscious, another knocked out when she was thrown against a steel door frame and a third worker was struck as she tried to help subdue the patient, referred to in court only as “Patient X.”

Code White is the hospital’s term to call for assistance with a violent or out-of-control patient.

The hospital is charged with three violations of the Ontario Occupational Health and Safety Act: Failing to provide proper training to protect workers’ health and safety; failing to take proper precautions to protect workers; and failing to develop proper measures for workers to summon help in an emergency.

Bird ran through the training workers at The Royal were given about how to deal with violent patients and highlighted the many ways staff could call for help — at least 20 phones on the ward, a portable phone, cellphones or even by pulling one of the ward’s fire alarms.

Staff made two phone calls for a Code White “within a matter of seconds” of the attack, proof that a system was in place, he said.

As for safety policies, Bird says the law only requires that the policies be in place.

“Do we have a policy on workplace violence? We do. Does it have information on how to summons immediate help? It does. We do not have to establish the effectiveness of this particular policy.”

There was little way anyone could have known Patient X posed a risk, Bird said, even though the man had been the cause of a previous Code White on The Royal’s schizophrenia ward. The day before the July 2012 attack, Patient X had been allowed to leave the hospital on an unescorted pass into the community.

But Bird did acknowledge the risk that is ever present on the ward, even among patients on their way to recovery.