The police arrested a woman in her 40s who wielded a knife against a nurse at a university hospital’s psychiatric department in Seoul.

According to the Guro Police Station and Korea University Guro Hospital, the woman visited the hospital on Thursday morning. Then, she suddenly talked abusively and wielded the weapon she had prepared against the nurse.

As soon as the commotion started, the nurse pressed the emergency button to ask for help, and security guards and police officers arrived at the scene immediately. With the nurse’s quick response, no other person had an injury. The police arrested the attacker at the site and investigated her on charges of special intimidation.

The hospital said it did not know the cause of the patient’s crime, adding that it did not receive any relevant information from the police. Hospital officials worried that the latest case could mislead the public as if the attacker’s mental health had been the cause of the crime, just like the case of late Lim Se-won, a psychiatrist who was murdered by a mentally ill patient in late 2018.

The violence could have inflicted severe damage on the medical staff, but the emergency bell helped prevent it, the hospital said. After the death of the psychiatrist Lim, Korea University Guro Hospital installed the emergency bell in every department and added security guards.

“We were able to deal with the situation, which could have led to a serious incident because we made efforts to create a safe patient care environment,” an official at the hospital said.

kym@docdocdoc.co.kr

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