I did some research too, and there have been a few (VERY FEW) physician victims over the past few years, and it seems like most happen during the walk from the hospital/office to the garage/your car. Either way, if someone approaches you with the intent to assassinate you, concealing a gun isn't gonna do well to thwart this. I'd say the best strategy would be to try your best to not make people want to assassinate you.
Or work on that BJJ training.
These attacks are gruesome...maybe you haven't done your ED rotation yet
. My point was that car "attacks" are certainly less frequent than gun attacks.
Honestly, while I would advocate some people work on self-defense classes, I would rather not. You do sparring and drills, and I value my hands at a few bucks apiece as a surgeon. I'm not going to risk them on punching bags. I'd much rather carry a firearm.
I've done two rotations in the ED, seen hundreds of car crash victims, a few dozen GSWs, and not a single hammer incident.
All of this doesn't give us the Okay to SHOOT a patient with our concealed firearm if we feel threatened. A dead patient is a dead patient is a dead patient. And you would be right in the hot seat by both the public and the board. Maybe you'd get away scotfree, but maybe not...it would be really out of your hands at that point, and....well....sometimes life just isn't fair.
Yes, actually, it does. In my state, if I were cornered and had good reason to believe that I were in imminent threat of death or severe bodily harm, then I can use deadly force.
You're going to tell me that I should be okay with a patient killing me while I remain defenseless, because
life isn't fair? No, no and no. I'm going to tell you that it is legal for me to use deadly force against someone who is trying to kill me or cause severe bodily harm. This is not "out of my hands" or "in the hot seat." This is me knowing the laws of my state and knowing what I am able to do in a given situation.
Then you may have to face consequences....maybe you'll be okay in the eyes of the law, but I've seen employees fired/lose their liscense for simply striking a patient. I've seen it happen when patients attack an employee and other employees strike them (never seen it when an employee pushes away or strikes simply as a means to escape). You're supposed to safely restrain him not punch him in the face (according to policy). Now imagine if a patient were to be shot by the employee/doctor. Maybe you would face no jail time (true case of self defense), but you can probably kiss your job/practice goodbye.
I'd love to see the headline "Surgeon fired after shooting assailant." Then they show the picture of you in a tie with your white coat, and they show one of the assailant's last twelve mug shots.
If you had good reason to believe you should restrain him, but you didn't, and then you let the situation escalate until he was hitting you, then you probably will be found somewhat liable. If you didn't realize the guy had been doing PCP prior to coming in with chest pain, and you walk in the door as he lunges for your throat, then I'm not going to focus on "safely restraining him" until I'm safe.
As a physician, in a hospital, you abdicate this position you speak of.
No, I didn't.
The patient-doctor relationship is a two way street. If they willingly and knowingly threaten or endanger you, that relationship is broken, and you should respond accordingly. Guy in the ED verbally threatening you? Tell him he's free to leave at any time but you're unwilling to treat him if he behaves that way. He takes a swing at you? Try to escape, but if you can't, you do what you have to in order to protect yourself. He poses a real threat to your life (possessing a gun, knife, or something else)? I'm fine with whatever level of force it takes to come out alive, just as if it was a stranger on the street threatening me. Because that's what they are at that point: they've broken the patient-doctor relationship.
Exactly. I would absolutely try to the utter best of my ability to de-escalate a situation. I'd get out of the room as soon as I were actually concerned, call security, maybe the police, get more people in the room, try to be reasonable, etc. I understand that patients/family get extremely stressed in some of these situations, but just because someone does a line of coke and drinks a handle of vodka doesn't mean I'm willing to believe that "sometimes life isn't fair," and I should be willing to give up my life and hope my children don't miss their father too much.
Again, I don't think physicians should be armed in the hospital. The risk:benefit ratio is extremely high. I don't think physicians are in any significant danger in the vast, vast majority of situations, and I think that 99.99% of situations can be resolved by calling in more staff, security, or even the police. But I don't believe that a weapon-wielding patient deserves to be treated any differently than a weapon-wielding street thug. You should take every precaution necessary as soon as you realize that someone may be acting abnormally to prevent a situation from getting out of hand though. I have had patients threaten to hit me, so I stood across the room, had 4-5 other people in there to talk the guy down, and repeated myself over and over again.