What a purple dot actually is

Several BC health authorities operate alert policies that attach a marker — commonly a purple dot — to a patient's file and room door. It indicates that an incident of violence occurred, or that a worker assessed the potential for one. It is an administrative label, not a clinical finding: it marks the patient as a workplace hazard.

There are no accountability measures protecting patients from the consequences of being labelled this way. In one case documented by the BC Ombudsperson, a patient was only able to have the dot removed from their medical record after involving that office, and even then only after repeated requests.

For a person with dementia, distress is a form of communication — a response to unmet need, to noise, to being approached too fast. The dot records the response and erases the cause.