A Night of Violence

Our security staff are amazing.

On this particular night shift they were busier than I'd ever seen them. I was on the A&E ward, where one patient had a security guard with him. I was doing everyone's observations, and he was very co-operative. When I took his BP, he told me it should be good because he swims a lot. I said, 'Oh you swim?', to which he replied (in a very thick Polish accent), 'Yes - I swim in vodka'. 'Oh great, another drunk', I thought. He would get up and start walking around, and talk to the guards (without realising it, he kept changing the language). He got up at around 3am, wanting to go outside for a fag, there was only one guard present, I'll call him Mick. The other security guard had picked the right time to go for his break. Of course he was told to get back into bed, and could not go outside. I was in the sluice when I heard a loud bang, and saw our patient had thrown Mick head first into the table, and was on top of him. We tannoyed for more security - stat. Mick managed to get him into a headlock, but was still pinned to the floor. More guards turned up and they restrained him, he apologised. Much to our suprise, Mick shook his hand and also apologised, then offered to take him outside himself.

Later on, we heard a tannoy; 'Security to reception STAT' twice. I wasn't too concerned, our patient was back in bed and reception wasn't anywhere near us. Not too much later I noticed on the computer that there as a patient in resus for a dislocated finger. Odd, I thought. Hmm I know that name... it was Lisa, one of our security guards. I guessed what had happened before I was told. Some youths, who can't find anything more entertaining on a Wednesday night, decided to attend A&E and cause some trouble. Because that would be just hilarious. They were escorted off the premises by Lisa, when more of their friends turned up outside and started a fight with her. That's when they called for help. Once again our security staff turned up very quickly and diffused the scuffle, leaving Lisa with a dislocated finger. A few hours (and a lot of paperwork) later, she went home.

It was 7:55am, nearly the end of the night shift, when the morning staff came in and we were handing over. There were two security guards looking after our Polish patient, when he decided to go for a wander yet again. He pushed one, they had him on the floor in an instant, but they were struggling to hold him, so we called for more help. He was screaming out for help, and shouting out something in Polish. There were 4 security guards now, they brought him up to his feet and forced him back to his bed where they held him down. He'd inherited a super human strength and was fighting back like I'd never seen. They were still struggling to hold him down and he wouldn't stop screaming. Me and some other NAs were standing amid the crowd, and Mick ran up to us shouting 'You have to do something now!', of course a matron was preparing some sedatives in the treatment room. She told me to get some lorazepan from resus, I came back with some diazepam. That'll teach me to look at the label. Time was being wasted while our security guards were fighting a losing battle. Finally the drugs were ready, and the matron went over to administer them. One of the housekeepers muttered something about drunk patients coming in and doing whatever they like, and I agreed. It does really get to me sometimes that we do all we can (at least I do), even when it's self-inflicted or undeserved. We were all shaking our heads. We concentrated on the handover once again, in between the screaming, when I suddenly remembered the handover I received before my shift started. I'd completely forgotten and I had pre-judged him based on his behaviour and the little comment he'd made to me before. He wasn't drunk, he had a small haemorrhage inside of his brain. It came rushing back to me, and I felt so shocked at myself. I won't be making that mistake again.

Always remember the facts, never pre-judge a patient, you can bet the one patient that becomes critical on you is the one you didn't think was ill.

I think I started this post with the intention of thanking our security staff; it's ended up with me learning a lesson I won't forget.

So back to my first point, thanks to our fantastic security staff, we couldn't function without you! If I get round to going out with the work lot (and stop being so antisocial) I will buy all of them a drink.