Liar, liar.

Probably some people have heard by now of the fatal patient shooting at a Shands in Illinois.

One of the saddest things about this incident is the blatant ridiculousness of the lying lie (that's like, an ultra-lie) the hospital CEO made in a press conference statement:

"Patient care and safety was never interrupted or compromised and things are back to normal at our hospital right now," Brown said Saturday evening.

Uh, so they evacuated 26 patients to another floor and locked down the entire hospital because everyone was feeling so safe with an armed crazy lunatic in the hospital? And the patient who barricaded himself and another patient in a room, and then was shot by police.... that was supposed to be, what, a model of hospital safety to be emulated by all?

So to recap the CEO's words: Having a crazy, suicidal patient waving a gun and kidnapping other patients in an acute care setting is *safe* and doesn't interrupt patient care?

RILLY?!

I'd like to know where his vision of "safe, uncompromised patient care" exists when there are gun toting patients roaming around the building unchecked-- maybe Ukrainian prison wards?

I'm actually pretty amazed he didn't come out and say, "It was the nurse's fault," followed by a string of physician affadavits claiming the sole bearer of culpability in this inicident was the nurse, and had the nurse not neglected her duties of prison warden, none of this would have ever happened.

I would actually be surprised if they didn't eventually resort to that time-honored hospital executive tradition of blaming it on the nurse for not de-escalating the situation properly and/or leaving her sixth sense/X-ray vision at home that day. Because obviously she should have also been telepathic and realized he was lying when he answered "No" to the intake question regarding the urge to harm oneself or others, even though everybody lies about their suicidal and homicidal ideations when asked by a health care provider. (I mean, like you're going to open up to a complete stranger and say, "Why yes, now that you mention it, I am thinking about killing myself--and I'll get you and your little dog, too! Thanks for asking. Can I use the restroom now?" )

This story also reminds me of my ghetto hospital nursing days, and the time when we were in "lock down" because the police were busy chasing around a suspect with a knife in the main lobby. And the time when we all watched from the window a shooting in progress on the streets below.

And the time a big, scary 200+ lb man starting screaming and following me down the hallway because I refused to let him take a potentially arrhythmia inducing drug off of the cardiac monitor (silly wabbit--safety precautions are for kids!) and I got my little 90 lb ass out of there. I was told by management that I should have actually let him abuse me and broken protocol just this once, because "sometimes that's our job, and look, now that poor patient has left the hospital angry with a bad impression about the hospital."

Funny, I left the hospital (and my job) angry and with a bad impression about it, too!