What happened
Becky Barnes, 33, was a community nurse in Redhill, Surrey, working with patients who had learning difficulties. She had collected a patient, a woman in her thirties, from her home to take her shopping. Barnes was driving when the woman started punching her head and face and pulling her hair.
“I was trying to control the car and trying to fend her off,” she told the BBC. She pulled into a garage, still being hit, undid her seatbelt and got out. The patient got out too, took her handbag from the back seat and walked off.
Barnes had more than a month off work with facial and neck bruising and a whiplash injury, and nightmares afterwards. She went back, found it hard to cope, and moved on.
The outcome
No criminal outcome is reported. Barnes tried to press charges and received compensation, but could not, as she put it, bring charges against a patient with a learning disability. Nurses’ leaders told the BBC more should be done to protect NHS staff working in the community.
What went wrong
The lone working was the whole encounter. One nurse, one patient, one moving car, and no second person in the vehicle. The visit was a lift to the shops, and the risk assessment does not usually follow the worker into the driver’s seat.
Once the car was moving, every control went at the same moment. Barnes could not stop, could not get out, and could not use both hands. Pulling into a garage was not a plan she had been given. It worked because the woman chose to walk away.
What it teaches
A car journey with a service user is a confined space with no exit and a driver whose hands are occupied. That journey deserves its own line in the risk assessment, separate from the address the worker is going to. The questions are practical: who sits behind the driver, what is the route if the passenger becomes distressed, and where the car can be stopped quickly and safely?
A second adult in the vehicle is the control that would have changed this case. Where that is not funded, the fallback is a plan for stopping: a known place to pull in, and a phone within reach rather than in a bag on the passenger seat.
Questions for the room
- Where in your day does a service user sit beside you while you are doing something else, such as driving or using a lift?
- What is your exit from that moment, and have you ever practised it?
- If a patient attacks you, what does your employer’s policy say it will do about charges, compensation and your return to work?
- Who decides whether a lone worker drives a service user, and is that decision written down?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: confirmed. Two sources were read in full: the BBC News health feature of 8 July 2007 and its text-only archive copy in the vault. This is a survivor account. The pack holds no prosecution, no inquest and no safeguarding finding, so the page describes what happened to her and what she said about it.
Barnes refers in her quotes to 1997, which appears to be an earlier incident or period; the pack dates the published feature to 2007 and does not reconcile the two. The record also notes that the case was carried as a Nursing Times feature, which the pack does not reproduce.
Our lone working training covers the travelling part of a community worker’s day, which most risk assessments leave out.
Sources
- BBC News · ‘She punched my head and face’ (health feature, 8 July 2007) · 2007
- Victims and Victors archive · She punched my head and face: NHS nurse assaulted (BBC feature text) · 2007
Reviewed 20 October 2026.