'She bled out 3 times and almost died,' husband of emergency room nurse Elise Wilson tells Statehouse lawmakers

The husband of the emergency room nurse Elise Wilson, who nearly died from a knife attack inside Southbridge's Harrington Hospital more than a month ago, pleaded with Statehouse lawmakers to pass workplace safety legislation.

An emotional Clifton Wilson said his wife, who has been a nurse for 45 years, had 11 stab wounds after an angry patient repeatedly knifed her and severed an artery on June 14.

The young man allegedly sat in the parking lot sharpening his knife for 20 minutes before entering the emergency room, Clifton Wilson told lawmakers. Conor O'Regan, 24, is accused of the attack.

After receiving a call informing him of the attack, Clifton Wilson said he sped to UMass Memorial, where a helicopter was taking his wife.

"It was flesh and blood everywhere," he told lawmakers, recalling the moment when they moved her from the helicopter to the hospital. "I said to myself, she's not going to make it. She's just not going to make it."

Eight and a half hours of surgery later, the surgeons at UMass Memorial had saved her life.

Clifton Wilson said the trauma surgeon at UMass told him the tourniquet applied to his wife at Harrington Hospital was "absolutely textbook and that that's what saved her life."

"She bled out three times and almost died," Clifton Wilson continued.

Clifton Wilson on Wednesday appeared before the Legislature's Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security, asking lawmakers to pass a bill calling for health care employers like Harrington Hospital to develop, implement and review employee safety measures on an annual basis.

Since the knife attack, the bill has been dubbed "Elise's Law."

Nurses aren't "expecting to encounter violence but they do, every single day of the week," Clifton Wilson said. "They are cursed, spit upon, bitten, punched, kicked, and yes, stabbed."

Directly addressing members of the committee, he added, "You're the ones who can save them."

Since the attack, Harrington Hospital has beefed up security, and now has a metal detector, he said. They've also hired a Southbridge police officer.

"So it can be done," Clifton Wilson said.

A "simple wand-ing" by a security officer would have detected knife and saved his wife's life that day, according to Wilson.

The legislation, pushed by the Massachusetts Nurses Association, was first introduced in 2009 and currently has 128 co-sponsors in the House and Senate, according to state Rep. Denise Garlick, who is a nurse. She said health care employers note that they have safety programs, but she argued they aren't updated regularly enough.

Dr. Mark Kenton, doctor at Mercy Medical Center, also testified in support of the bill and offered to put lawmakers in scrubs for a tour of the hospital.

Kenton said he could show them what can happen when a patient is given the overdose-reversing drug naloxone, naloxone, also known as Narcan. The patient can wake up "swinging," according to Kenton.

"We're asking you to protect us," Kenton said.

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