In two separate and unrelated incidents on Tuesday night, seven nurses at hospitals in Shanghai and the southwestern city of Kunming were attacked by angry fathers upset at the way their children had been cared for - the latest in a series of confrontations underscoring tensions between medical staff and patients.
In the attack in Shanghai, a nurse was left with a broken hand, and in Kunming, Yunnan, a nurse suffered a wound that required four stitches on her face.
Police in the Minhang district of Shanghai said on their microblog that a man charged into a treatment room in the emergency ward of the Children's Hospital of Fudan University, then began insulting and attacking a nurse whom he accused of carelessly taking his child's blood.
The father said the sample was not taken properly, causing it to solidify later and leaving it unfit for testing. It was not clear whether more blood was taken, or how the alleged mistake was made.
Police said the father also fought off three other nurses who tried to calm him down. Three of the four nurses suffered minor injuries, while the other's hand was broken when it somehow became slammed in a door.
The father, who was said to be a security guard at a shopping mall in the city, was detained by police.