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Patient pleads guilt to knife attack against nurse

Healthcare Security Weekly, December 9, 2004

A patient at Bons Secours Maryview Medical Center in Portsmouth, VA, pleaded guilty last week to stabbing a nurse, the Virginian-Pilot reported.

While recovering from foot surgery last spring, Hubert Stephenson, 80, stabbed nurse, Laura DeBrough, in the back. Stephenson received five years of supervised probation.

When Stephenson stabbed DeBrough she had just begun her shift and heard a loud noise coming from his room. Nurses attempted to coax Stephenson back to bed and put restraints across his waist. When DeBrough called his doctor, he came limping down the hallway.

DeBrough followed him and grabbed his arm when she felt a blow to her back, the Pilot reported. When another nurse intervened, she noticed that he had a knife. Another nurse noticed DeBrough bleeding from her back.

A hospital security officer eventually calmed Stephenson and he was taken to jail. DeBrough was brought to the emergency room where doctor's discovered a puncture from the pocket knife in her lung.

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