But, the violence is a tragedy. There’s a good reason why cameras should be in every ER.

Any person who floats that particular spin needs punched in the mouth. Hard.

One day I went to lunch in the hospital cafeteria and emerged to find the hall lined with police officers, guns drawn. They were looking past me down the hallway. I chose to go in the direction that the officers were NOT looking. As I exited the back of the hospital, several black helicopters ominously circled overhead. No one knew where exactly the shooter was. Just then my supervising physician called me from inside the hospital and said, “get back to work.” I said, “where’s the shooter?” He didn’t know, so I said, “call me back when you find out”. It turned out several ER doctors were shot, including one in the head. The shooter, if I recall correctly, was upset that his friend, an outpatient, hadn’t received pain medicine.

LESSONS LEARNED
1. It’s better to prevent a ‘worst case scenario’ than to deal with it after the fact. Be courteous to everyone, all the time. (OK, 99.99% of the time).

2. Don’t talk down to people, or you just might wind up talking up to someone.

3. It is dangerous to work in a hospital with a culture that doesn’t respect patients (or each other) with basic human decency.

4. Don’t wait for others to tell you what to do. Do what you think is right.

5. Protect yourself even if – especially if – your supervisors won’t.

6. If you see the ‘guns drawn sign’, vote with your feet.

AFTERMATH
I noticed in the weeks and months that followed this incident that patients seemed to be treated more compassionately and with more respect. But that could have been my imagination.

Did you forget the incident a few months ago where a drug seeker in Florida bit off an elderly physician’s finger?

The nastiest, most-a**holish patients are virtually always your drug seekers. They physically threaten physicians and staff, they show their a**, cause a commotion… and can get violent. One of my colleagues (ex-football player) was jumped by a drug-seeker, ended up body-slamming the guy, and the guy complained, and raised a huge stink about how he just needed medicine, and the doctor “hurt” him.

Addicts are nasty people when they don’t get what they want… and they do get violent. I’ve witnessed it too many times… so I’ll generalize that every day of the week, thank you very much.