Don’t argue with rent-a-cops, or medical staff…

Okay, now that I have pissed off every single person who has ever been a private security officer (including a few relatives), here is why:

They aren’t police, but some have seen The Shield and think that is how they are supposed to act.

So, anyway, seems there is a hospital that can’t keep their patients straight. In fact, it seems the outright SUCK at it, getting male car accident victims confused with female cancer patient 13 years their senior.

But, I’ve gotten ahead of myself..

So, in comes a patient for injuries from a car crash, they put an ID bracelet on him for another person entirely.

This other person it turns out is going to have chest surgery. Well a nurse comes in to speak to our car accident patient, since he is asking for food, and tells him he can’t have any since they will soon be cutting into his chest to remove what could be a cancerous mass.

This doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in a guy who is there for injuries from a car crash. He decides it is time to seek professional health care elsewhere.

The nurse though disagrees and tell him to stay put and eventually calls security in an effort to keep him from leaving (I wonder, was the cancer patient involuntarily committed to even give some basis for the nurse wanting to restrain the person against their will).

Of course nurses are another group of people you don’t mess with (yep just pissed off a whole bunch more people I know).

The problem isn’t that they have had it drilled into their heads they are experts (a great many are), but that patients are idiots. In their defense I even understand why many of them think this. Patients are whiney, patients think they are dying just because they are uncomfortable, and some patients think that just because they have seen a few episodes of House and some old reruns of Saint Elsewhere that they know exactly what is wrong with them. Nurses, if that statement does not express a sentiment you have heard before, please, speak up and give me some references, because you’re full of it.

Hell, I’ve been hurt and in pain, it really sucks, being a patient sucks, caring for someone who is in that place sucks, except as a patient you get some pity due to the pain you’re in, care providers, well, let us just say people underestimate how much their jobs suck. 

Of course security does get involved, and according to our car accident patient, and (I’m paraphrasing/summarizing here) beats the hell out of him and drags him around to try to force him to stay. Eventually, according to his lawsuit, a hospital administrator figures out they have seriously F’d up and seeks to buy him off with pain meds.

Having seen the lengths people will go through to try to get relief from pain this would be an excellent method to seek compliance provided one has the ethics of a slime mold.

Anyway, eventually the man gets away and goes elsewhere for treatment. It seems he did get some competent medical care because now he is suing the hospital.

All I can say is I hope he wins. I hope he owns them, literally, punitive damages so large he could afford to buy the place.

Unfortunately any judgment he wins is just going to come out of the pockets of people who go to the hospital for treatment, that’s just how it goes.

**Disclaimer, this information seems mostly drawn from his complaint against the hospital and is probably therefore completely one-sided thus leaving me to the opinions expressed.