A Bad Day

Last week we had a very interesting incident at the hospital at least it started on campus and ended up in the middle of traffic. Let me start from the beginning, my partner and I received a call from the emergency room. A patient under emergency petition had run out of the emergency room and out into the parking lot. We had no description of the patient so I went into the ER to talk to the patient’s nurse; my partner went to our jeep I thought to get it ready. Now my partner for the day has been working in the hospital for 7 months, but this is the first week we have worked together. My other 2 partners had always known what to do in an elopement so what my partner did next confused me.

As I was heading outside towards the jeep I gave my partner the description over the radio. The second I step outside he started his pursuit of the patient alone. I started walking throughout the parking lot and when I was not able to locate the patient I called for my partner’s location. When he did not respond I became very worried and then the next thing I hear over the radio was my partner screaming, “Help, Help, I am being assaulted”!! I started running through out the parking lot and could not find him, and he would not answer the radio. I ran around the parking lot for 5-10 minutes with only hearing the occasional screaming on the radio.

Finally he called back asking me where I was, I told him that his location was more important. He told me he had rolled out into the median of major highway. It was 5pm and rush hour was on and I started running across the freeway trying my best not to get run over. When I got to my partner an off duty deputy was standing by as my partner pinned the psych patient down. My partner’s face was bleeding and he had a cut on his lip. The patient started kicking so I jumped on the legs and we lay on top until police assistance could arrive.

When the state police and sheriff deputy arrived the started to put handcuffs on the patient and of course the patient started fighting. The deputy told the patient that he will break her wrists if she fought and the patient said they will break his face. The patient was cuffed and loaded back into an ambulance, I got on the ambulance to watch the patient.

When we arrived back into the ER the staff was more worried about the patient and completely ignored my bleeding partner. Finally my partner started yelling, “I just got my ass whooped and no one is helping me.” The ER doc told him to take a seat and they will get to him. Our employee health doctor was passing by and told my partner, “Oh just wipe the blood off and you will be fine,” no tetanus shots or anything.

It turned out that the patient had no psych problems, but was on high on PCP. I tried to explain to my partner that we never go after people alone for this reason. He told me I should have been there, but at no time did he ever give me his location and when he finally did I was there in a second. Even though it was at the end of the incident I was still there.

Our switchboard operators received 75 phone calls from people driving home from work. The calls reports ranged from dead bodies on the side of the road to a security officer beating a patient on the road. The 911 operators said they received several calls stating that a security officer was beating someone up and the security officer is dead in the median. The situation never got that far and never should have, but it did and I hope he learns from this.

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