In Arlington: Star-Telegram.com | 05/05/2005 | Nurses hit by car in hospital parking lot.
By Susan Schrock
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
ARLINGTON _ Two nurses were injured when they were struck Wednesday by a car driven by a 34-year-old woman in a Medical Center of Arlington parking lot, police said.
Witnesses told police the woman appeared to accelerate her car "up to 20 to 25 miles per hour" as she drove toward two nurses who were walking toward the hospital about 6:30 p.m., said Lt. Blake Miller, a police spokesman.
One nurse suffered minor injuries and was treated at the scene. Another nurse was taken by helicopter to John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, where she was listed Thursday in serious condition.
Witnesses detained the driver until police arrived. The woman was taken to JPS for emergency psychiatric evaluation and may face criminal charges in connection with the incident, which is still under investigation, Miller said.
Wow. I always wonder what’s going to happen on the walk to my car (and I don’t work at the hospital where this happened). My head is on a swivel to and from the car, looking for something. Maybe I’m a paranoid, but I tell lots of drug seekers ‘no’, etc.
Here’s hoping these two nurses recover very quickly, and the driver gets what she deserves.
Update: Driver was (allegedly an) Angry Drug Seeker!
The driver was angered because a doctor at the hospital refused to
prescribe her a certain type of drug, according to sources at the
hospital.
I know how you feel. I’ve had angry refused narc seekers threaten to come to my house & beat me. A little hair raising in a small town where everyone knows where you live. I live in a larger city now & talked to the phone company to make sure they didn’t list my address in the phone book.
I rarely do this but I want to bitch about this. There is so much bad press about doctors and how they don’t care, the whole treat them and street them mentality. But I swear to god, no one thinks that one of the unfortunate things that I have to spend I’d say up to 20% of my medical decision making time on is whether or not the symptoms are real- or worse that my patient that I’m supposed to be developing a theraputic alliance/bond/relationship, whatever you want to call it, is BSing me to score some narcotics or sleep medication or viagra (a movable item here).
Yeah it’s bad that people are gunning for staff in the parking lots and at their homes, and that you feel freightened of your patients, but what’s worse is that sometimes you mess up- you let the young man with tatoos everywhere walk out of the ER with a subclinical subarachnoid hemorhage. Or the girl who comes to the ER in a bikini top asking for benzos really does need all those psych meds that she’s pushing for.
80% is hisotry taking- they tell you that. Well, 5% of my patients I can’t believe what come out of their mouths. At that point they’re essentially equivalent to a patient that cames in speaking a foreign language.