Doctor stabbed: When something goes wrong, security feels the heat

Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston finds itself in the unenviable position of trying to deal with a pair of high-profile security incidents within the past nine days. Last week, a released sex offender allegedly attacked a female employee, following her into a restroom in the main hospital, banging her head into the floor, and attempting to rape her before she escaped.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, a patient stabbed a psychiatrist multiple times in a medical office building before an off-duty security guard who was legally carrying a handgun shot the patient dead.

The Boston media is over all these incidents, particularly the stabbing, but let’s establish a baseline first: Patients attack clinicians all the time. Certainly the attacks aren’t all as viscious as what happened to the psychiatrist, but it should not be surprising to anyone that behavioral health areas are at high risk for assaults just based on the patients being treated.

Risk assessments may help prioritize security-related problems and solutions. It will be interesting to learn if the assailant in the stabbing exhibited any warning signs ahead of time about the attack;  if so, those could be logical starting points for reducing risks in the future.

The attempted rape is scarier because that had an uncomfortable level of unpredictability. Would metal detectors have stopped the alleged assault? Would video cameras have stopped it? Probably not. A security officer stationed outside the restrooms might have been a deterrent, but that’s an unrealistic approach.

You have to empathize with hospital security forces. If everything goes right, security’s role is unappreciated and often unrecognized. But if something goes wrong, security immediately feels the heat.