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Bill to bar attack on health-care workers advances

Posted 2/8/13

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — A state House committee has approved a bill making it a crime for patients to assault health-care workers who are treating them.

The Wyoming Tribune Eagle reported Friday the bill sets penalties of up to 12 years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

The bill now goes to the full House. It already cleared the Senate.

Several nurses and other health-care workers told the committee of being attacked by patients.

Republican state Rep. Norine Kasperik of Gillette, a co-sponsor of the bill, says it's not uncommon for patients to attack care-givers.

Brenda Hammock, a paramedic with American Medical Response, says the bill isn't targeted at ill patients who strike a health-care worker, but at the "mean drunk" or other patients who think they can assault the person who treats them.

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