My first impression here, and what infuriates me the most about this, is that why the nurse who is standing there, trying to do the right thing by the patient, has some !%@$#-ing ADMINISTRATOR on the phone, essentially throwing her into harms way, when she's face to face with a guy with a gun. Although he's a cop, and in uniform and by that we expect him to behave responsibly, he's still a guy with a gun, and what does the administrator do?
He's pushing the defenseless nurse to defy the cop based on some pointy-headed policy created by suits in a boardroom, a cop who's armed to the teeth and already ticked off. How outrageous and spineless.
I can almost guarantee you that the nurse is thinking as the time, "I know damn well I'll lose my job, if I don't follow administrative policy to a tee. I know damn well they'll throw me under the bus in a second and I'll lose my job, if I deviate AT ALL. So I'm going to get them on the phone and get them involved, because they'll NEVER back me up if I don't." So, I sympathize with her on this front, because she was trying to enforce an insane policy that demands a nurse block law enforcement. What fresh hell is that?
It's absolute administrative madness, that what it is.
Now I myself, personally, would have taken the occasion to disappear to the doctors lounge for a tall drink of caffeine and a pop tart, and a camp-out on the crapper, long enough to let the situation "take car of itself," if you know what I mean. But my passive aggressive a$s-covering approach may not be right for everyone. And my impression here is the nurse was trying to do the right thing, and that the cop was too, until he took it too far. It's my guess that if he simply walked in the room and took the blood, no one would have stopped him, the nurse included, but you never know. It's a shame the nurse was put in this situation and that hospital administrators create cultures that make this all too likely to happen, when crossed with a cop with a temper problem.
As far as the cop goes, I think he handled it poorly. Whether his handling of it was technically "legal" I don't know. It may well have been. BUT, he'd be in a much stronger position to have simply walked in the room and taken the blood he will certainly claim he was entitled to draw. If a nurse or hospital security then tries to physically stop the cop, then you have an entirely different situation, where the officer looks much more favorably and the hospital personnel much less so.
Where the chips will fall on this legally, and who will lose their job and who will keep theirs, I don't know. But it takes me back to residency, when I specifically remember having this discussion with one of my attendings. Her advice was, "If a cop ever comes in and wants to draw blood, let them. If it turns out it was drawn illegally or is admissible in court, that will fall on them, not you."
After all, there's very little to be gained by refusing to complying with an angry guy with a gun, whether a cop, or otherwise.
Words to live by.
