Have you ever called 911 from your hospital?

[FireStarterRN, BSN, RN]

Maybe some of you ER nurses have experienced something like this. I had a patient for 2 days. She was an asthmatic in her 40s whom I received from ER intubated, with a hx of previous intubations and a social history of chaotic and non-compliant personal life. Her drug screen was also postive for methamphetimine. She was put on the vent.

She required quite a bit of sedation, and became extremely agitated if not snowed. Her lung compliance numbers looked good the next morning and she responded well to her frequent nebs, so we extubated her on the morning of my second day of having her.

Upon being extubated, she proceeded to unlease the worst verbal abuse and profanity I have ever heard, and acted like a woman in need of an exorcism. Eventually the doctor ordered a Mental Health eval. She continued to behave like an irrational maniac and threw a full cup of hot coffee at the MHP woman, who ran out of the room covered with coffee. We don't have security at my small hospital. I was advised to call 911. Two police officers came and the patient continued to act in total defiance of them and they were forced to subdue the patient with double handcuffs.

This was a high drama and continued on for a couple of hours, as we tried to figure out what to do. Finally a second MHP fellow came and got the patient to co operate and she was released with a safety plan to the care of some disreputable looking friends, who she also was verbally abusing. Before I could give discharge instructions and make sure her other IV was out (She had DC'd one of her IVs) she walked out of her room, making a scene as she walked outside yelling at her friends and cursing.

I had to fill out a police witness report. The patient showed up 2 1/2 hrs later to have her IV removed. She was feeling much better, most likely after dosing herself with meth.

My coworker and I joked that we needed to call a priest to purify the room with holy water, the patient did seem as if she were possessed by a demon.

[Altra, BSN, RN]

This "high drama" is commonplace at my hospital. Those dang asthma attacks and other medical conditions keep interrupting people's high ... :stone

We have a good security team, but still occasionally need to call for law enforcement. We don't actually call very often because it's more typical for police officers already at the hospital to just have to step in to a situation that occurs while they're there. When we actually call it's usually due to a gathering crowd with the high likelihood of multiple individuals being armed. My hospital does not have metal detectors, so it reaches the point that our in-house security staff, no matter how good they are, cannot be expected to try to manage a crowd of 15 or more, at least a couple of whom are likely armed.

[grandee3]

Don't usually have to get the law involved, security does a good job. But, we have had a few elderly, confused pt's call 911 on us. Thought I would share that.

[TazziRN, RN]

I have, several times. The rural place I worked last doesn't have security. It seemed the cops were there even before I hung up the phone! They took good care of us: usually we called for the city police, but the sherrif's dept and the highway patrol often showed up too, just in case.

[FireStarterRN, BSN, RN]

Don't usually have to get the law involved, security does a good job. But, we have had a few elderly, confused pt's call 911 on us. Thought I would share that.

Ha ha, that happened to us at a nursing home I worked at years ago! We had one fellow who called 911 frequently. I think they ended up taking his phone away!

[mom2michael, MSN, RN, NP]

I had a patient about 3 weeks ago call 911 from his room in the ER. Apparantly he didn't like the 2 hour wait to get his tests done. We have a scanner and heard the police being dispatched to our ER Room #XX to investigate a person being held hostage in the ER.

Of course the police came, but they were busy laughing (as were we) about it. The patient however, didn't find it funny.

And yes, rural ER, we call the police (911) sometimes several timse a shift. We only have 1 security guard on duty until about midnight or 1 a.m.

[bill4745, RN]

We call occasionally (ER) to help restrain patients. We also have panic buttons that call police or security.

[EmmaG, RN]

Our ER did, and I've had patients who've called 911. I can only recall them being called twice for the floors; both involved husbands with guns attempting to kill their hospitalized wives... one succeeded (and shot himself too), the other was arrested without harming anyone.

[FireStarterRN, BSN, RN]

Basically, this was the most dramatic incident I've ever experienced with any of my patients. Nursing is a very interesting profession.

[jackson145]

We're too small for security. Luckily, we have a very pretty X-ray tech and the cops are racing to beat each other to our door when we call them!

[mcknis]

I have had a pt call 911 for not having her food brought to her in a timely manner. She was pretty upset, but the VP of the hospital had to be called in to deal with her. Unnerving! We also had some of the confused pts call 911 for being trapped. Felt bad, but the PD did check it out with our security staff. BTW, our security staff is very helpful, and we trust them whole-heartedly. If additional help ius needed, we can call a "Code" which alerts other trained staff to respond to help security with whatever is needed. Most of the time, just the males and house supervisor respond. Have been on a few of those codes where I am the only male facing a 300+ lb pt who is agitated and threatening to harm others. He would toss me like a teddy bear!

[pinksugar]

I haven't called them myself, but we had a confused LOL call 911 for a glass of water. I thought it was hysterical but they didn't seem to think it was too funny.