Too Little To Late

I have to explain how security works since there has been so much in the news lately. When something terrible happens then news stations always say we need to re-evaluate security. I am going tell you how security works; you can only deter the average person from committing a crime. If someone wants to hurt someone it is going to happen, security and police can only really deter people that care. An example would be people speeding on the highways. You know there are police out there looking so you slow down, but some keep speeding with no care for their and others safety.

Security officers are bonded to the rules and regulations of their company. The Virginia Tech shooting was a tragedy, but could have had yielded less victims if the rules were different. After the first shootings at the dorm the campus should have been shut down, but the director did not want to do it. So the shooter returns and kills 30 more people and now its securities fault. Then I read that someone killed a hostage and their self at NASA and they are blaming security.

Here is the problem in most facilities; they have so much square footage they need covered including access control, but they under staff and misuse the security personnel they have. Our CEO at my hospital hates to see fire trucks out front because it just looks bad. So one day I went out for my patrol and the local fire department needed to have their PPD read and they decided to drive the fire truck to the hospital (they can park where they want). The last time we had a fire truck out front the CEO chewed out my partner in front of everyone. So I see this fire truck in front of the ER and start telling this guy to move it to the side of our building and he refuses. The whole time I am out arguing with this idiot who doesn’t want to walk the extra 15 feet a C.N.A got jumped by 3 people. The CEO is stubborn as hell, but does not want to get sued so he finally has relaxed his personal rule on fire trucks, but it was to little to late for the C.N.A. Oh yea did I mention it was still some how our fault, I was only doing as I was told by our CEO. The sad truth is facilities will always wait for some kind of tragedy to happen for them to realize they are misusing security or change policy.

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Fake Florence Nightingale + Fake Gangster = Disaster

Well my partner and I had a little excitement this week. My partner and I were called by a ward secretary because nurses were failing to calm down an agitated patient. Upon arrival I hear someone cursing like a sailor and threatening violence upon anyone who stops him from leaving. We ran to the room because the patient sounded like he was becoming more vulgar only to be stopped an RN. The room had maybe 4 C.N.A.s and 2 R.Ns and a new floor manager. The floor manager tells us, “The patient really doesn’t like people in uniform, so just stay out of the room,” and she stands in the door way refusing to move. The next thing I hear is his RN yelling put the pole down!” Once again staff refuses to move for us to enter and take down the violent patient. One of the C.N.As grab the pole (the piece that holds the IV on the bed) and brings it out to us. After 45 minutes the R.N is able to hit the patient with drugs and knock him out, temporarily.

Thoroughly pissed off my partner and I went back to our office to document what exactly went on. A few hours later we are informed there is an agitated patient threatening violence on staff once again on the same floor. When we arrive this time the patient is standing in the ward’s tiny waiting area with a tube hooked to his chest and connected to what my partner called “his lunch box.” The reason the patient was upset was because he wanted to go out and smoke, but the doctor would not sign orders to allow him to smoke. The patient had a collapsed lung and for him to leave the floor he would have to discharge himself and his “lunch box” would have to be disconnected. Within a minute his lung would deflate and in minutes he would die. So needless to say he could not leave or discharge himself because it would cause almost certain death.

The patient’s R.N was sitting in a chair telling the patient the hospital’s policies and telling him what would happen if he went out to smoke. The R.N then started asking questions about the patient’s personal life which made him realize he had nothing to loose. He had a new born baby, but wished her gone, his family disowned him because he was an asshole who tried to harm others, and last he was broke because no one wanted to hire him also for the same reasons his family disowned him. Basically this was a punk kid who thought he was a suburb thug. Every attempt by us to take control of the situation was thwarted by the R.N who was only making the situation worse. 40 minutes had gone by and this kid was still ranting and raving about how he was a thug and how “he was gonna straight bust us upside our heads yo,” the whole time he is swinging his “lunch box.” Our clinical coordinator the whole time was trying to contact the doctor who was unreachable.

My partner finally tired of listening to this white guy using the N word after every other word interrupted the nurse and told the kid his options. The patient stood there for a minute, made a phone call to his baby momma leaving a voice mail threatening her and his baby. After that the patient headed back to his room and stayed there for a few minutes. It seemed like the situation was over and the staff started discussing putting Vanilla Ice in restraints when he walked out of his room fully dressed. My partner, myself, the dumb ass R.N, and the clinical coordinator followed the patient to the elevators. When the doors opened I stepped in front of the door and informed him that he could not leave. The patient reaches into his pocket and pulls out a knife, waves it in front of mine and the clinical coordinator’s face. As my partner and I step forward to beat the crap out of him, the R.N decides to play patient advocate and stands in between him and us. The clinical coordinator reaches for his phone and calls 911. Within seconds we hear the sounds of sirens and a load roar coming up the stairs. I look over at the stair case to find a K-9 and 6 guns in my face. I yell the knife is in the right pocket and push myself and the clinical coordinator flush against the wall, my partner a black man from Chicago was in the corner hiding from Cujo the K-9. The police started ordering the patient to put his hands up and instead the patient reaches for his pocket and that’s were it goes bad. When the patient reached for his pocket the deputy released the dog at the same time a state trooper was kneeling down to shoot. The dog turns his head and does what he is trained to do, bite and rip. The state trooper’s arm is being torn up by the dog, the patient cursing at the police. The dog lets go and looks right at the kid and all the gangster in the boy suddenly disappears. I pulled the state trooper over to the nurse’s station and asked if someone in the audience could take care of his wounds. The whole time I could hear the kid crying like an infant as he is cuffed. The patient stayed until the “lunch box” could be safely removed and he was taken into custody by the state.

My supervisor had a meeting with our department head, our vice president, and their boss about the situation. They discussed that when security is called everyone is to get out of the way. We are called because talking has failed especially in this situation where this 23 year old kid had already threatened staff. No one in the hospital has a right to risk our safety including R.Ns. You have to go to college to be a doctor or a nurse so you would think they would be smarter than the un-educated. I have started college course and I have figured out why these people seem ignorant at times. It turns out that no college in the United States at least teaches common sense.

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Be On The Look Out: GOD

It seems that with almost every unexplainable action, an act of a person that boggles the mind, to the committer there is one simple explanation. It turns out that God tells them to do it or at least some where in their religious doctrine the action is allowed. Ever since I started working security on the streets to present day in a hospital when I question a suspect’s or patient’s motives they answer God told them to do it. I see it a lot on psych wards and amongst drug users. They are afraid to take responsibility for their actions i.e. pulling a fire alarm because God said a fire was immanent when they did it really for attention. Religion manipulation does play a role in criminal activities. People steal for financial gain to provide for their families even though all religions make stealing a sin, but if they use the money for food religions say it is a sin to have hunger. Religions justify killing but not murder, so if a person feels the killing just then they will not be punished by God.

I have found when dealing with a problematic or suicidal patient having a broad knowledge of all religions can help defuse potential dangerous situation. To understand people’s motives you have to know religion whether or not you believe.

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Security Tip

Think security and not style, I am talking about your identification badge. When working I notice that no one person wears their identification badge in the same place and 90% of the time it is not visible. It makes it harder on security to ID non- employees. Now I know because staff wears different uniforms or the badge may get in the way, but make sure it is visible at all time. This little tip will help security ID who belongs and who does not.

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Just when you think you have seen it all

As I arrived into work I see that the emergency room waiting area is full. I clocked in and put my gear on and the officers I was relieving were giving me the run down of the day’s activities. “Not a thing going on, the ER is just full and you have one down in the cooler” (body in the morgue). A few minutes into the shift my partner and I were ask to assist a male out of his vehicle. He had some kind of stomach virus and had not eaten in days. As we bring the person in we are suddenly thrown to the wolves by registration staff. The full waiting area has now turned to a lynch mob because they are tired of waiting and they are sicker than the person who was just taken back to a bed.

The whole time this is going on there is a female in her mid 40’s just sitting in a chair in front of a nurse almost catatonic. Instead of calling a psych tech or another nurse the registration person points her out to me. The women seem to snap out of her hypnotic state, starts whispering and crying and run out of the waiting area. Normally people in our area love to join a mob so I thought it was weird she ran off, so me being me I followed. On a side note the last time I followed an upset women outside her husband nearly ran me over after he beat her. Anyways she had parked outside our ambulance entrance and when she drove off she hit the curb, swerved and slammed her brakes at a stop sign beside the hospital. I jumped into our broken death trap of a jeep and followed her over, I stopped and walked to her window and that’s where the fun started.

The women would speak almost as if there was no problem, except she kept saying, “If I said there was a cat there, would you agree with me?” I told her, well Miss I am not going to lie, the only critter around is the bird chirping away behind me. Then she dropped her head and started to cry and whisper, “I want to end it all, I want to end it all.” The she reaches over to a gym bag and I yelled get your hand away from that bag. As I reach for my radio she started to head into traffic. I would put my radio back and she would stop. I could not get her to park the vehicle nor could I get her to step out. After a while she seemed to have to personalities, but what was weird it seemed each personality had its own mental problem. Now I spoke with our wonderful psych nurse and counselor and they think she is just border line, but there is a 1 in a million chance this is happening.
After about three hours of standing, at times in the rain trying to convince both personalities not to kill themselves I was able to calm her down long enough to radio for police assistance. In the process of talking with her one of the personalities told me her husband abuses her. Now it is not my job to judge the truthfulness of this statement, but just the same I was going to leave that up to the deputies. They were able to get her to admit herself to our psych ward where the nurse and councilor will find out if we have a border line or a 1 in a million phenomenon. Either way it was a first for me to try to convince two personalities not to commit suicide, my brain is fried!



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