Posted on 06/17/2008 10:43:00 AM PDT by OnRightOnLeftCoast
When the emergency room staff at Northfield City Hospital thought an obviously disturbed patient was about to turn violent, they did what many hospitals do in that situation: They called the police...
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
I rest my case. LOL
What an insipid take on this event...
What happen to the straight jacket theory?
There are also pharmacudical straight jacket that should unbeknownst to the suing type public handy.
Since when is mental illness a law enforcement issue not a medical one?
The slope continues to spiral downward.
The Bros tased him. :)
A number of electrocutions by TASER have been documented....
used to be doctors and nurses would jump the guy and strap them down. this hospital didn't have security?
nobody wants the responsibility anymore so they call the cops. i'm not going to 2nd guess the cops because i do not know what this patient was doing.
She continued: they should have waited until he seriously hurt someone.
there is usually a preexisting medical condition or the influence of some sort of drug. but by in large, the actual percentage of deaths due to tasing is very small.
Aha. The imbecilic government again.
Let's scrap this so-called democracy as it doesn't resemble what our founding fathers had in mind at all.
State and federal 'officials', the soopreme court and our elected idiots have made a mockery out of what our founders labored over.
They have scandalized the entire system and made it a dangerous octopus.
Where's a benevolent despot when he's needed?
It’s one of those liberal things... The victim is always to blame.
In their vision of utopia, the police and the courts have no significant function. They exist merely to provide salaries to the people who work for them, under the guise that they are providing a useful service to the community. But it’s not acceptable to call the police. If the police arrive, and actually do something, then they are at fault, and if the matter ever gets so far as to come before a judge, then it’s the judge’s responsibility to throw it out before it gets to trial. In the very unlikely event that someone is actually convicted of something, then it is the court’s responsibility to give them a slap on the wrist, and tell them not to do it again. That way, they can assure that valuable jail space won’t be wasted on violent felons, and will be availabe when it is needed to punish tax cheats, vigilantes, or gun owners.
RX: Taser once per day, preferably before eating. Do not mix with other medications without doctor’s approval.
If I had to guess, I'd say that hospitals got sued for jumping on guys and strapping them down. So they went with Plan B -- Call the professionals who know how to deal with violent situations. But now they're sued for that. I guess they need a Plan C ...
Plan C would have to involve making an appointment and getting approved to enter the Emergency Room..Oh yes, one would have to pass a credit/means test also. Like the commenter said, the ER people were probably getting sued for subduing unruly patients, drunks etc so they just started hiring armed security guards for the ER’s...
Definite case of “Catch 22”, don’t call the cops and get sued, call the cops and get charged...guess beside the armed guards the ER’s will have to start having psychiatrists on 24/7 duty also....
When I was a resident(a long time ago) in a suburban hospital, I had the pleasure of having a very pretty, very 18y/o, 5’1” female kick the snot out of me and my two fellow residents as we were trying to get a tube into her stomach as she had attempted suicide by swallowing a whole bunch of sleeping pills. I am a six footer at about 180 and I was the pewee of the bunch but she was an equal opportunity fighter and we all walked away with some very significant bruising. I can remember residents and nurses getting into some god awfull fistfights with drunk or unruly patients. We didn’t have a Taser then but I sure wish we had.
but now they defer to police in many situations. i would guess it is due to hospital policy that is dictated by administrators and their insurance companies.
Tasing one with a full bowel is likely to result in the crapping of one’s pants/panties as the case may be.
You might check on that. There are more and more restrictions on how a patient can be subdued. Nurses are injured SERIOUSLY every day because patients can’t be restrained. It requires hourly documentation as to why a patient requires restraint. Their rights supercede the rights of caregivers to be safe in the work environment. Security personnel have very strict policies about what they can do. They are called and stand around saying they can’t intervene with a patient. Visitors yes, patients no.
Most of the people second guessing what the hospital did have never worked in an ER. For 10 years, the office I worked in was in part of the ER - I heard and saw it all, including one guy who took down 3 beefy security guards *after* he attacked several nurses and docs. And all this was *after* he had killed his estranged wife and several children by setting their house on fire. I think he was going for an insanity plea set up from the get-go. A month in an ER, preferably nights, would wake some people up as the reality of what it’s like to work there. I often thought one of those ‘catch poles’ like Animal Control Officers use might have come in handy.
When can we tase the jackasses in the govt. who want to 2nd-guess this incident? I do not doubt that there can be cases of abuse, but unless this hospital ER is in the habit of doing this frequently I would expect a strong presumption in their favor that the ER staff viewed this (calling in the police, for whatever the police judged as necessary) as a desperately needed measure. I have had occasion to see some people in various psychotic and drug-induced states, and there are simply some people who cannot be reasoned with or dealt with (at least in the short term, until they are restrained) as anything approaching normality.......
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