Police use excessive force, ER docs say- What do ER nurses think

[rjflyn]

Heres the article link. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081224/hl_nm/us_police_er;_ylt=AsdEgR5vSvYsZBHgBHfkzcOs0NUE

My take is often as belligerent and uncooperative as they often are when the police have them in the ED I can only imagine how they are when they are being arrested. Having worked EMS as well as ED i can tell you the idiots being arrested often bring a lot of their own troubles on themselves. Yeah there are rouge cops out there, but if you spend a weekend in my ED and crap that come out of this guys and gals mouths you would know they are where they are.

Rj

[Iam46yearsold]

Lately there has been a whole rash of police assisted suicides. Where people create a scene or hold someone hostage or threaten another and force the police to fatally shoot them. Then afterwards we find a suicide note in their pocket. And that poor police officer has to live with the fact they shot someone fatally.

[nghtfltguy, BSN, RN]

it really all depends on the situation in my humble opinion..

i have used force before for the safety of the pt.. and for our safety as well....

the most memorable was we were flying this mva pt back to the facility.. well.. he was all kinds of drunk.... he started kicking and flailing trying to kick his way off the backboard... well.. it was a bit of a stormy night anyway and i sure as hell didn't wanna be in a crash cause of a drunk mva pt... well... i ended up giving him some vec IJ because he yanked his iv out and was bleeding all over the place and kicking us....it was a nightmare.... but.. uhh.. i did yell @ him and even hit him once before that... it was on my trip ticket... fully documented....

point is...

if you do use excessive force.. document it very well....

99.9% of the time.... you can get a doc to sign off on why you did it.. be it drugs or 4 point leathers.... just make sure in the long run you get a doc to sign off on it....

sometimes... in our field... excessive force is very much needed....

[GOMERNATOR]

There are good cops, bad cops, good nurses, bad nurses, good mechanics, bad mechanics, etc. etc. Speaking for myself outside of work I am leery of them. They have far too much power and very little oversight. If a cop is unwarrantedly being excessive physically or verbally what is one's recourse? Pretty much nothing. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.