Misplaced Priorities
Mark Thill
So, let’s take a look at some of what happened in our world this spring and early summer:
- June 30: A former patient stabs a nurse at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Muhlenberg, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He entered the hospital’s emergency department, waited, and then followed a housekeeping employee into a restricted area of the hospital.
- Same day (June 30): A former employee – a doctor of family medicine – carries an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle into Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center and shoots seven people, killing one doctor, before turning the gun on himself. He is believed to have hidden the rifle under his lab coat.
- June 17: A man grabs a Florida Highway Patrol trooper’s gun at West Marion Community Hospital in Ocala and shoots a nurse in the leg.
- June 15: Community Health Network in Indianapolis reports a suspect is in custody following a bomb threat, forcing evacuation of the surgery center.
- A day earlier (June 14): A patient stabs a nurse with a knife in the Harrington Hospital emergency department in Southbridge, Massachusetts.
- May 31: A man terminally ill with cancer is arrested – with two loaded guns in his car – after unsuccessfully hunting down oncologists to kill at several Bay Area hospitals. Inside his home, police find a typed note that says he “had to kill these doctors today because they are evil.”
- May 17: Aurora Surgical Center in Franklin, Wisconsin, closes after a woman calls and threatens harm.
- May 15: A 21-year-old inmate steals a handgun from a corrections officer assigned to guard him and holds two nurses hostage at Delnor Hospital in Geneva, Illinois, before being shot and killed by a SWAT team.
And our industry spends millions of dollars making sure the sales reps who call on you are current with their TB shots and flu vaccines?