Now, I have the benefit of being a tall man. That said…

In my experience emotionally compromised people cannot be dealt with in a “correct” way. People get high strung for a variety of reasons and will go looking for a fight without reasoned thought ever being involved. It doesn’t help that there are a lot of people out there in need of anger management skills they do not have.

Doing that anger management for them, is impossible at best.

All you can do is your best to keep anything that matters out of the firing line. Your colleagues, your patient, yourself, your job. Being at a disadvantage when it comes to size, physical strength, authority, experience with such situations, makes this much, much harder.

It’s difficult to say how much success someone else might have with it, but I like to answer implied threats like the ones you mentioned with feigned confusion. In reply to “I’m gonna be waiting for you later” I might reply “no need, we can talk this through right now, I am ready to answer all your questions as best I can”. This is somewhat passive-aggressive, but the intention is to refuse to acknowledge or entertain that there is a possibility of the situation escalating beyond civil behaviour (although it already has). By behaving as if their outburst was a reasonable thing to say, you also allow them to save face, but doing so without coming across condescending is an acquired skill. For me, acting just dumb enough to have them wondering if I’m even capable of saying one thing while intending another has proven most defusing.

In all but the worst cases, such implied threats are a desperate effort to force one’s will. If someone actually throws a punch, that will immediately make them the aggressor in the eyes of any observer, which in a civilized setting is total self-sabotage. People want to feel as if they are in control, and usually, people know that turning to violence is an admission of already losing it, and an attempt to regain it using underhanded means. Hence the implied threat of violence, instead of actual violence. At least for a start, if a person is backed into a corner using words, they may lash out physically exactly because they feel they must regain control at all costs.

If there’s a way to effectively de-escalate, it’s often only possible to identify by intuition, and an attempt to execute may as likely set off another fuse. But usually it involves appealing to something the person out of control cares about, something that throws them off the track of hot rage and onto something calmer. Instead of “you are scaring me” you might say “you are scaring your family”. But, when even people experienced with the person in question are at a loss and are doing nothing, the behaviour is either an exception they’ve not dealt with before, or the norm, which they’ve no clue what to do about.

When dealing with groups of irate people, there’s a bit of mob mentality involved. If there’s no clear “head” on the mob it can be quite easy to give it one, by asking only one of the people in the group a question, or forcing them to organize with something like “I can’t hear all of you at once”.

But you can’t talk down a storm. The best way is to find shelter and wait, give the person out of control time to sit with their thoughts and let them spin down as they tire out. If a group is involved they can talk each other up and get even more mad, so if you have a way to prevent them from speaking to each other for a bit, use it, let their trains of thought diverge even a little and they’ll have to put energy into coming back to agreement. Rage burns calories like few other things. It’s possible to do these things while standing right there, but it’s difficult and seldom more than an unnecessary risk.

If you feel that closure is important (and possible), a calm moment much, much later, is the best time IMO.

If the person seems the type to accept some calm words once their head has cooled, not hold a grudge (and are still within speaking distance), I make an effort to achieve some kind of a reconciliation. Something like “I realize you had a lot on your mind at the time, and felt things that aren’t meant to be controlled, but the way you behaved insert situation was not fair. It made the situation worse, and added to everyone else’s burden. I would like you to apologize in some way to insert relevant parties, they were deeply affected by having to deal with this.” Being too “blamey” can spark a hot guilt that flames into another outburst, so I try to allow them to save as much face as I can stomach. Besides, a forced apology is no apology at all.

Again, it can depend, but I like to go with treating their behaviour as somewhat inevitable, and that making up for it now is the logical next phase. Not all people are open to feedback on their character, and how to grow. Even people who are, can still get pissed when told off, before privately coming around while mulling it over, long after parting with you.

Even if the offender learns nothing, getting an apology out of them can do a lot for the people they hurt, and is worth some effort as long as they are likely to never have to deal with the same individual again.

If no apology occurs. Voice your discontent, even if only to the party that most deserves an apology. Such solidarity does wonders to quell the self-doubt a situation like this can provoke. The target of their ire, the female nurse in your experience, is likely to be asking herself how she could have dealt with the situation better. Even if she could have, it’s a travesty that she was forced into a situation where such skills would have been useful. She did not put herself there, the patients family did. In general, discussing such experiences with your peers can be extremely cathartic and helpful.

When it comes to whether you should pull the heat onto yourself to keep it off others, here I don’t agree. When someone is “under attack” and I feel I could help, I try to “join” the fight, not “take over”. A joint front is three times as strong as one of two fighting alone. If you pull all the heat onto yourself, you’ll still be just one person against a storm. An individual is easy to single out, even if that individual is swapped out for another. But being angry at two people at the same time, takes twice the effort at least.

By all means, step in to take a punch someone else cannot. But when it comes to words, we all hurt the same, and taking them together halves the pain.