The New Medical Hazard in Our Hospitals – Getting Shot

 

Texas open carry laws allow guns even in mental hospitals.

With angry antivaxxers, furious COVID deniers, legislated restrictions on treating LGBTQ+ patients and pregnant women and increasing gun violence in our streets coupled with increasingly lax gun-carry laws, one of the most dangerous places to be these days is a hospital. Not for patients. For hospital personnel, from nurses and medical techs to doctors. It is happening all across the United States, red and blue states are facing new dangerous reality, although states with open carry laws face even higher risks. Hospitals are generally not geared for risk of attack by outsiders or even those within the structure. Emergency rooms cannot stop victims in dire need of treatment for security clearances. They react quickly and automatically. Often the victim is brought to the ER by someone else, a family member or friend… or sometimes by a police officer.

The problem today is that we have highly politicized medical treatment, now considered a legitimate target even for some of the most prominent elected officials, from the president on down. Members of Congress and major political party leaders have strong beliefs, many profoundly medically incorrect, that have become viable election campaign pledges and have often resulted in legislation and/or judicial rulings that restrict previously long-standing and legally accepted medical standards and practices.

Antivaxxers and those have marginalized the impact of COVID have pushed against federal regulations and championed red state governors and legislators who have eliminated pandemic safeguards (even on a voluntary basis) and lifted vaccination requirements for public school children, raising the risks to parents who would like their children to be safe from preventable serious disease. Those involved in any way with providing access to abortion to residents of red states with anti-abortion laws face criminal sanctions as do physicians who provide gender treatment support of trans patients in states where such treatment is banned. Nineteen red state governors are pushing to allow them to track their residents if they travel to blue states for abortion services.

But risks exist merely because of the proliferation of guns, Supreme Court rulings that have all but eliminated common sense gun control laws, and the fact that interstate transportation of guns is without any restrictions to speak off. Places of work everywhere are increasing their security because of mass shootings and angry and well-armed individuals with some sort of retribution in mind.

Hospitals are, unfortunately, caught between being open to treat those in dire need and angry individuals and criminals with an agenda. But even where law enforcement officers are bringing injured criminals, in cuffs and under arrest, things can go badly. Paul Sisson, writing for the July 24th LA Times, notes: “One year ago, a prisoner receiving treatment at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego wrested away the gun of the deputy sheriff who was guarding him and fired three rounds before a nursing assistant helped disarm him… Internal documents reveal that the incident sent caregivers scrambling for cover. Fortunately, no one was hurt. But even today, many who suddenly found themselves in harm’s way relive those moments…

“While there are plenty of anecdotes to illustrate the point, such as this month’s fatal shooting of a Tennessee hand surgeon or the 2022 killing of a Tulsa, Okla., surgeon by a patient angry with the outcome of his back surgery, the numbers also document a growing trend… ‘According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of intentional injuries against healthcare workers and technicians has increased from 6.7 to 12.9 per 10,000 workers from 2011 to 2020. A survey of healthcare workers nationwide conducted in early 2023 found that 40% reported that they were directly involved in workplace violence in the previous two years…

“Dr. Asia Takeuchi, an emergency medicine specialist at Sharp Memorial Hospital, attended the meeting and shared that her facility has been calling “code green” more often than used to be the case. That’s the phrase that goes out over the facility’s announcement system when a medical provider urgently needs assistance from security personnel… From January through May, she said, the lowest number of code green calls that Memorial experienced in a month were 34. The highest was 64. That’s one or two incidents of significant violence per day.

“Recently, she said, the hospital instituted a Taser protocol in its emergency department for situations when a patient can’t be calmed down with words or medications. One incident, she said, involved a severely agitated patient who picked up a metal medical stand and threw it into the light fixture of his room… ‘Unfortunately, he just continued to escalate and escalate; he required restraints and, unfortunately, ended up having to be tased,’ Takeuchi said. The hospital also has recently added metal detectors, she said... It’s not hard to find other local examples.” Few hospitals scan admitted patients for weapons, but among those that do, a widening trend, often detect large knives and guns, generally illegal in blue states and allowed in red states.

The notion of “freedom” as embraced by rightwing ideology – when it comes to guns and medical requirements – often puts a whole lot of people who disagree with such ideologies (the majority of all Americans, by the way) at severe risks, which they cannot mitigate and of which they might not even be aware. Human life, even the lives of children, are secondary to these rising legislatively-permitted threats as they stop medical care and make gun ownership (even assault weapons) a priority above all else.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we are very much departing from the norms of just about every other democracy on earth with our willingness to put everyone in harm’s way to preserve rights that were never contemplated by our constitutional authors but are cherished by a minority with extreme views protected by extreme laws and judicial rulings.