Emergency Room - Part A

You are the social worker on call for the emergency department in a local hospital. You have just received the following phone call:

"Hello. Yes, hi. I am a nurse in the ER, and I just observed something down here that concerns me. A couple just brought in their three month old son with a high fever. While they were waiting to be seen by the doctor, because it is pretty busy here tonight, the guy, Carlos, started yelling at the woman about something. He just kept yelling at her, and then threw the baby’s bottle at her. She wasn’t doing anything, just sort of shrank back in her chair. After Carlos threw the bottle at her, he stormed off. Maria, that’s the woman, started crying and rocking the baby. I was going to go over to see if she was OK, but then Carlos came back into the room. He walked over to her and sat down without even saying anything. Maria just kept crying and trying to comfort the baby. I thought this was something you should be involved with. I’m kind of nervous about going over there now by myself."

You decide to go down to assist with the situation.

Questions for Part A:

1. What concerns you about the above vignette? What are the areas that you would like to get more information about?
2. How would you start to handle this situation? What would you do first?