I could rest assured the culture of safety would change immediately at that hospital.
What started out for pre-hospital EMS, DT4EMS has become for Everyone in Medical Services!
Today, while answering emails I had a thought:
Many times when a story of assaulted staff makes the news, I contact the reporter and ask them to dig deeper into the subject. If they ever respond to me and they follow up, the hospital Public Information Officer (PIO) says “We don’t have any problems ” with violence.
What do you think would happen if a hospital administrator worked the Emergency Department on an episode of Undercover Boss?
If you have never seen the show, it has administrators in disguise to look like employee and try to do some various portions of the job(s) they are an administrator over.
The administrator gets a chance to see what is going on… on the front lines of their company. Riddle me this…What would happen if a hospital administrator went on an evening/night shift in their ED?
Would they get to see how dangerous it really is for staff?
Would they see/hear how staff talks about the use of force in a break room or really uses force on the job?
I can bet the administrator would observe when no official training (or policy exists) the employee is forced to respond based upon their own experience or primal instinct.