Observation Deck

Addressing violence

In August, I recounted some acts of violence committed in hospitals in the preceding months. By way of bringing you up to date:

• Sept 12: A 49-year-old man is arrested for allegedly shooting and killing his 70-year-old mother at around 1:30 p.m. in the ICU at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H.

• Sept 10: A man fires multiple shots at 11:40 p.m. in Novant Health Huntersville (N.C.) Medical Center before he is killed by police.

• July 26: The head nurse at the University of Utah Hospital is arrested – violently, as we all saw on the video — by police for (correctly) telling a police detective he wasn’t allowed to draw blood from an unconscious patient without a warrant.

• And a recent article by Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak reports that 75 percent of nurses who responded to a recent survey said they had been subject to physical or verbal abuse. Turns out it’s not sales reps who are roughing them up. It’s patients.

All of which makes me wonder, as I did last time: Why do we have such stringent protocols in place for the sales reps calling on our nation’s health systems, but there are so little safety measures in place to deal with the guy who walks through the door with a gun or a knife, or the patient who takes a swipe at a nurse?

Seems like we should call vendor credentialing by its true name – vendor management – and deal with it as such. Perhaps then we can turn our attention to a real problem – violence in hospitals and surrounding communities.

The American Hospital Association’s Hospitals Against Violence initiative (www.aha.org/violence) is trying to do just that. Through webinars, meetings, educational materials and sharing of best practices, the AHA is helping hospitals address what it considers one of the major public health and safety issues throughout the country – violence.

Addressing violence inside and outside the hospital’s walls is tougher than making sure the reps who call on you have been vaccinated against TB. It just seems like time and money better spent.