All Entries Tagged With: "shooting"
Hospital shooting raises security questions
Hospital safety is being questioned after a patient shot and killed a doctor at Florida Hospital in Orlando on May 27.
Last month, a 53-year-old patient shot and killed a 41-year-old transplant surgeon in the hospital’s parking garage and then killed himself, reports the Los Angeles Times.
Since the murder, the hospital has stepped up its security and police escorts are available for those who need it.
Security experts say physicians are becoming more common targets of angry patients.
Don’t shoot the care provider; make hospitals safer for workers
Following a wealth of discussion on the John Hopkins Hospital shooting that took place a few weeks ago, The Baltimore Sun reports that according to a federal lab report, healthcare workers are four times as likely as the average American worker to encounter violence on the job. The risk is higher for those working in psychiatric or emergency units.
The article suggests that patient safety is directly linked to staff safety, and that workplace violence in hospitals is an “epidemic” that needs to be recognized by the public and remedied. The Baltimore Sun informs that healthcare workers are not only threatened by guns being brought into the facility (much of the discussion surrounding the shooting was focused on the need for metal detectors), but that a majority of staff assault is by patients who push, punch, scratch or choke.
A balancing act – no nets, no problem!
I’m sure you’ve all been discussing the shooting that happened last week at Johns Hopkins, as I have. I don’t know that this changes the landscape all that much – we know this threat exists, and we know that there is only so much preventative medicine that we can employ without turning our facilities into armed camps.
At this point, I am not familiar with a lot of specific detail – sometimes a person’s parent can be the focus of a lot of ill feelings, and sometimes those feelings will prompt an action far in excess of normal behavior. That being said, I trust that you are all establishing a means of continuously identifying workplace violence risks, and establishing response plans with municipal law enforcement.
Implementing workplace violence policies
Howdy, safety profs!
I’ve received a number of inquiries lately looking for workplace violence policies. I figured if a few might have questions, then that’s enough indication to me that there may be some other folks as well looking for these elusive policies.
With all that said, to be honest, I don’t know that I would advise pursuing policy development. It’s more than likely that any policies you would need to support the management of risks associated with workplace violence are already in existence. The key to compliance is to follow the risk assessment recommendations in the SEA and, for all intents and purposes, conduct a gap analysis based on the elements identified in the SEA.
Following deadly shootings, Knoxville hospital demonstrates the value of Twitter
Parkwest Medical Center in Knoxville, TN, showed the value of social media in the face of a tragic situation, when an alleged gunman shot three employees before killing himself on Monday.
The medical center updated its Web site’s home page for visitors, and more interestingly, the facility kept people apprised of details via its Twitter page.
Twitter is a useful tool to convey information when an incident or emergency unfolds. I’d have to imagine the hospital’s “tweets” were read by many people online who wanted to follow what was going on in the aftermath of the shooting. I know I was reading them. The beauty of Twitter is the user controls the information that the public reads, which is an attractive aspect in the wild west of the Internet.
If you’re interested in the latest hospital environment of care updates, check out our Twitter postings.
Knoxville shootings offer a chance to review your security training
A terrible shooting at Parkwest Medical Center in Knoxville, TN, on Monday — one victim and the alleged gunman are dead, two other victims are hospitalized — proves how rapidly a security incident can unfold. It’s likely the suspect shot his victims and then killed himself before police and security officers even had a chance to help.
In such cases, it seems the priority is [more]
