Chinese grandma violently assaults nurse over grandson’s complaint

A 61-year-old Chinese woman is expected to be released from detention on Monday after serving 10 days behind bars for attacking a nurse, according to a local media report.

The unnamed assailant, from Jiaxing in eastern China’s Zhejiang province, was taken into police custody after delivering such a beating to the 30-year-old medic that the victim needed hospital treatment.

The attack, which lasted three minutes, took place at a public hospital in the city on March 30, Jiaxing Television reported on Saturday.

Part of the reason the assault attracted such a large amount of public attention was because it coincided with National Doctors’ Day in the United States. Inaugurated as a way to recognise the contribution doctors make to people’s lives and communities, the day is celebrated in many countries around the world. It will be marked for the first time in China this year, on August 19.

Incidents of physical attacks on doctors and nurses in mainland China are common, and there have been many cases of medics being badly injured and even killed by angry patients.

According to police reports, the incident in Jiaxing happened after the attacker had taken her grandson to the hospital for treatment for a high temperature.

Doctors recommended the child be put on an intravenous drip, but the youngster resisted the nurse’s attempts to insert a needle into his arm, the television report said.

When the medic held the boy’s head in her hands to calm him long enough to put in the drip, he bit his lip causing it to bleed. The sight of blood apparently enraged his grandmother who reacted by punching the nurse in the face.

The stunned medic fell to the floor, but that did not stop the irate grandparent, who continued to punch and kick her, witnesses were quoted as saying at the time.

A police investigation found that the nurse, who had recently had a child herself, had not injured the boy in any way during her attempts to insert the drip.