Health Care Thoughts: Assaults on Nurses – Celebrity Edition
Health Care Thoughts: Assaults on Nurses – Celebrity Edition
by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt
(updated author to clarify)
Assaults on nurses are a growing problem, with emergency department nurses in the most danger, followed closely by nurses caring for the mentally ill, substance abusers and elderly patients with dementia problems.
It takes a Kennedy though to assault maternity department nurses.
Since a spate of newborn kidnapping some years ago maternity wards are lockdown wards, often with electronic tracking bracelets on the newborns. No one, not even the mother, can move the newborn out of the ward without permission. Nurses are disciplined or fired for breaches of the rules.
In January Douglas Kennedy, 10th child of Robert F. Kennedy, tried to remove his newborn child from a lockdown ward without proper clearance Kennedy later claimed he was taking the newborn outside for some fresh air (a newborn? in January? in New York?). (See here and here)
A confrontation ensued and Kennedy has now been indicted for assaulting two female nurses.
The most shocking part of this story? Kennedy is a reporter for a Fox News affiliate.
Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt
Dear Tom
of course I don’t know what happened, but I wouldn’t be too sure you do either.
When my children were born, many, many years ago, the hospitals and the doctors acted as if the child belonged to them and that I must be some dumb savage if I thought I had a right to see the child. No blows were exchanged, but knowing how I felt at the time, and still feel, it could have come to that.
I don’t expect you to understand this. But you ought to.
I like fresh air too.
Two questions.
One for Dan. Why isn’t Rusty’s name clearly at the top of the post? As is the standard for mediated posts?
The other for Rusty. Why is Kennedy’s status as a reporter for a Fox outlet a cause for surprise? That a Fox reporter would do such a thing? (as opposed to debauched TPM or dKos posters). Or that a Kennedy works for Fox?
But your “takes a Kennedy” leans the former direction and implies some moral legitimacy for Fox that has not been earned and equally suggests some rather unmoored hostility towards the Kennedy’s all too typical of the wingnuts.
A hint for you and Lil Rickie. Not everyone regurgitates when they hear the word ‘Kennedy’. Meaning that those who think they have snuck in a successful low blow by introducing that word often have another think coming.
All that said Doug was an idiot. Even granting the bracing qualities of some January cold, fresh air, carrying a new born through the confined spaces of hospital elevators, corridors, and entry spaces to get access to it is kind of stupid. Because oddly sick and contagious people walk into and are housed in hospitals like all the time. And newborns are not display toys. Indeed in my own lifetime, and certainly in that of Coberly expectant fathers were expected to be confined to waiting rooms (if they were pantywaists) or down at the club or bar with a box of cigars to hand out when the call came (manly men doing manly things with men). In light of that the whole thing is odd. Even if we don’t revert to the hegemonic “Doctor (and nurse) Know Best” messaging kneeing a maternity nurse trying to do her job is probably not the right move.
Interestingly we had an identical case here in the SF area a few days ago. A new father cut off the security bracelet from his newborn and left in a car for parts unknown. Which initially launched an Amber Alert since no one knew it was the father, but even though cops quickly concluded that no crime had been committed nd the baby was returned unharmed nobody around here is jumping up to give this kid ‘Father of the Year’ awards for wanting to spend quality time with his baby. Or whatever.
So not for the first time I can’t see eye to eye with either Tom or Dale here. The guy was a dumb shit and his last name has no bearing on that either way.
What Bruce said.
Bruce
of course you can’t see eye to eye with me. you’ve never been there. i am not prepared to give my children over to Big Brother Knows Best. I don’t know what happened with Kennedy, but “kneeing the nurse” sounds too much to my ear like some of the hysterical all-but-lies that come out of emotional confrontations.
i am not… because i don’t know anything… defending Kennedy. but i can tell you that when i was in a similar situation the plan was not to wander all over the hospital in and out of contagious wards, but just to get outside where the air was clean… and not contagious. and then go home, with the mother.
all us dumb shits got left is our family values.
It seems to me that there was no reason for everyone to succomb to hysteria. For one thing, the hospital was responsible for the physical safety of the child until the parents checked out and took custody of the baby. That’s just the way it is and the Dad should have known this. This was his fourth child. However, people who have just become parents frequently lose whatever grasp of . One way or the other, where was the mother? If the Dad was out it, the Mom may have been able to cool him off.Sounds like no one was thinking.
The account of the assault could well be accurate. Ok, then sue him after you call the security guard and let the law do its work. Rusty is right, though, about the dangers presented by intoxicated or otherwise mentally impaired patients.
Evidence based reality.
Video shows Kennedy retreating into an elevator, a nurse trying to reach out in the direction of the baby, and then falling backwards to the floor. Kennedy’s lawyer then goes on record and on camera stating that Doug just lifted his knee in a natural attempt to protect his baby and the nurse flying backwards was just her fault for trying to interfere with his paternal rights. Now you can parse those on record words against a frame by frame analysis of the video and determine for yourself whether a reflexive defensive move by a father deliberately violating hospital protocols against a nurse attempting to do her job would have objectively produced that particular result. And if you were on the jury panel you would be obligated to keep an open mind.
But what I see is an asshole assaulting a nurse. If Doug wanted his baby born in a manger with only him and the Holy Spirit in attendance, or maybe a submissive mid-wife then great, he can do the whole Lion King Expose the Infant to the Skies schtick. “Behold My Son!!!” But he and/or his wife made the decision to have that baby under medically controlled conditions. And a part of that ‘control’ is a contractual obligation to play by the controllers rules. That the baby was apparently born healthy didn’t give Doug any more freedom than jerking a preemie from Neo-Natal and taking the baby to a faith healer would.
That baby wasn’t chattel. In a legal sense it was held in trust and some deference was due to the trustees. Just as I can’t put a gun up to the head of Managing Trustee of Social Security Tim G and demand “my money” right now. Life doesn’t reduce to “Uggh, MINE!”. Medical custody of a baby is not theft, not least because there are legal ways to discharge yourself or that baby from the hospital if need be. Of course in this case ways that would require maternal consent, something that as yet is lacking from the story. Did she say “Doug Fly Free! And for God’s Sake Take the Baby!” if not the moral and legal case gets a lot murkier.
Bruce
given your flights of fantasy I am not sure that I would credit your eye witness of the video interpretation. but as i have said several times, i don’t know what happened.
no doubt the hospitals have rules, and contracts, and every mother and dad should read them with their lawyer to be sure they know what they are signing.
meanwhile us assholes and dumbshits will just have to take the contempt due us by the organized and civilized branch of humanity.
I have a bit of a hard time with the idea that two of the leading experts on social security are duking it out over RFK’s kid’s actions in a hospital. From what I heard–I know nothing, I was not there- Kennedy was with a pal who was a mucky muck doctor at the time. Doctors and nurse work together, but from my experience-father was a physician, mother was a nurse, two siblings were nurses, one daughter is a radiation therapist and many years ago I worked summers and weekends in a hospital as an orderly, there is always a level of tension/turf wars between doctors and nurses in a hospital. Now if we proceed to speculation, I expect that Mr. Kennedy probaly was not fully conversant with the rules (or the reasons for them)–I would not be– and probably thought he was above them anyway at least when he was with his pal who may very well have egged him on. The nurse, of course, may have disregarded common sense in an effort to enforce her turf or may have really thought Kennedy was stealing the newborn. I would surely have expected that the proper protocol would have been to call security rather than attempt to prevent the theft herself. So while nobody is covering themselves with glory here, I think the whole deal is a reflection of what a miserable society we live in that we have to guard newborns from their fathers and how many miserable people there are who could not have resolved this issue in a less confrontational manner. But hey there are rules you know.
terry
i won’t accuse you of siding with me. but i find your take on this rather reasonable. which was close to what i was trying to say.
people are not always reasonable, least of all fathers and mothers. i think it’s a very bad sign that those who make the rules can’t figure out in advance that there are going to be misunderstandings and how to deal with them short of telling themselves that they are morally superior to the dumb shits and assholes who don’t just naturally know the rules and abide by them.
we see people killed from time to time because they don’t know how properly to submit to the cops without reaching suddenly for their drivers license in a way that makes the cop think he’s pulling a gun. this is generally a cause for “liberals” to demonstrate against “police brutality.”
on the other hand, anyone who “assaults a nurse”, or tells a revered expert that his math is wrong is automatically a dumb savage who needs to be taught a lesson.
i am probably saying this badly, but the self righteousness of the left based on fantasies and lies that they believe automatically because it conforms with their preconceptions is only exceeded…barely… by the self righteousness of the right based on the fantasies and lies that they believe automatically because it conforms with their preconceptions…
Well, I saw enough to say I do not know what happened.
The claim that Kennedy twisted one nurse’s arm sounds credible. The claim that he kicked the other nurse does not. He could well have lifted his knee in a defensive gesture, which knocked the nurse down and felt like a kick to her. (From the description of the action, if she was close enough to reach for the baby it would have been difficult for him to kick her above the knee, much less kick her hip. But his knee and her hip could easily have made contact.)
oh, heck, min
i was about to try to be reasonable. but even if he “kicked” her in the hip with his knee, that is not what “kneed” usually means.
i don’t want to get slid into a defense of kennedy here. i was trying to argue against filling in the blanks with personal fantasies.
now i gotta go talk to that Lion King about the Holy Spirit.
speaking of “frame by frame analysis”
wasn’t that what the prosecutor used to prove Rodney King directed his own beating?
I’m not sure what this has to do with any political or economic issue concerning healthcare. Is the threat of assault against nurses now so great that the number of people wanting to enter the profession is declining? Otherwise, why is this posted on AB?
And as for Kennedy’s working as a reporter for a Fox News affiliate, not all local Fox News affiliates are political. The one in Detroit, for example, is not. I’m told that the Fox network wanted a local news affiliate in metro Detroit and somehow gained control of the channel that was the CBS affiliate. Fox simply hired most of the news people from the CBS affiliate, and the style of the news programs remained the same as they were before: just ordinary evening and nightly news shows, but they begin an hour earlier than the other network-affiliated news shows. This happened before I moved to the area, and I don’t know the details or remember all the specifics of what I was told, and I rarely watch it these days, but it’s not political. The New York station may be, though; I wouldn’t know.
But I’m not sure why this was posted to AB at all, much less with a title suggesting a political or economic healthcare issue.
Dale one reason you “don’t know what happened” is because you didn’t bother to review the available evidence before tee-ing off on Rusty in defense of some apparent “father right” as against arrogant medical professionals.
Christ you and I have fought shoulder to shoulder against the crowds of “fuck the evidence, I know what I know and you can stick those data tables where the sun don’t shine” folk on SS and NOW you throw ‘flight of fantasy’ in my face? And in the absense of any evidence review assert “hysterical all but lies”?
None of us are privy to absolute knowledge. On anything. But that just instructs us to educate ourselves as best we can before attacking others. Instead you heard ‘father’ and substituted ‘if it were me’ without regard to context or evidence. Well it is a free country, but—
Oh Christ look at the video and consider basic physics. That nurse would have to have been moving pretty fast to have the action of running into a knee to have the reaction of falling that far backwards.
Plus I don’t know about high mucky muck doctors vs nurses but there are accepted protocols for taking newborns out of maternity wards and bringing a pal with a fancy sheepskin doesn’t change anything.
And the ‘reaching’ vs ‘time to knee’ argument is just silly. For one thing Kennedy might have started his defensive move just in reaction to the nurse moving his way with clear intent to intervene irrespective of any arm movement, second it is just human nature to extend your arms towards infants in danger even if you are not in fact within reach.
Kennedy’s lawyer conceded the knee and the resultant fall and tried to immediately pivot to “how dare she”. As if maternity nurses didn’t have an duty to babies in their charge. Of course there is the Roshomon factor working. But all that tells us is to not reflexively jump to the defense of an actor because he his a “father” or against him because he is a “Kennedy”. At a minimum we should start with the evidence at hand.
I did look at the video and consider physics. In my 20s I was an advanced martial arts student. (I taught some, but would not call myself a teacher.) I am not claiming to be an expert, but based upon what people say and what I saw, knee to hip seems likely.
Well, the Kennedy incident is probably not the best to illustrate Rusty’s point. Nurses and medical techs are, in fact, subject to the threat of assault from patients, patients’ families, and others in ER’s, for example. When you bring in a gunshot victim to a trauma center, his/her assailant often comes in at the same time to finish the job. As cops and EMT’s can tell you, bullets don’t have eyes.
I know a number of people who work in assisted living and long term care facilities which house patients with dementia. These delusional people often have violent tempers and regularly attack their caretakers. Nurses, techs and other caregivers in long-term care facilities are not adequately compensated considering the real risks of their profession. The companies who sell the psychoactive drugs needed to manage these patients, in contrast, are more than adequately paid. We should be spending more on medical research to reduce the incidence of dementia or treat it more effectively and less on overpriced medications. NancyO
Well, lots to answer here.
Bev…the post is certainly not the best way to begin to note the rather profound issues of both changes in staffing patterns, pay, and work demands of medical staff (ratios of rn to patient doubled in MA over the last few years and the increasing jeopardy to individual nurses and their licenses when ‘mistakes’ are made under increasingly demanding conditions). So the post misses the mark in that regard of course. Also, it is a healthcare thought, not a post, but I see the difference is not necessarily apparent.
Bruce…fixed. I was rather off hand with this ‘healthcare thought’, and I added the links as well. I will be more carefull.
Instead of getting into the specifics of this case, after checking with several MA medical experts in policy, the rules regarding newborns are very specific and carry severe penalties. So perhaps the incident could have been handled ‘better’, but the rules were written in regards to kidnappings. The risks of infection are also critical to other babies. If the doctor friend advised Mr. Kennedy to ignore the rules it is my opinion his priveleges should be reviewed by the hospital…the consequences for the nursing staff are too severe to ‘let it go’. My bet they were understaffed as well, and perhaps things like that will come out. Whether Mr. Kennedy was apprised of these procedures is not covered.
I am working to get us posts from two experts on the changes ongoing in the private sector with insurance and staffing that are below the public radar…profound enough to warrant the term ‘macro’. Medicare gets the press, but the private sector is making much bigger changes relatively unmarked.
“It takes a Kennedy though to assault maternity department nurses”? Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’ll just say that that sentence threw me off, if the point of the post was to raise the issue of assaults on nurses and other medical staff members at hospitals and nursing homes.
I think I’ll leave it at that, other than to point out that nursing programs—especially accelerated ones such one at U-Mich. that compresses the program into a single school year (two semesters), and others at community colleges, that compress it into 18 months—are filled to capacity. I’ve heard that the one at the local community college in the county where I live has a two-year waiting list.
The upcoming posts on the changes you’re referring to should be well worth reading, and hopefully will garner the attention they should, Dan.
Some days the thinking part is slower than others….
What has this to do with politics and economics?
well bear with me a minute. it’s hard to talk about this without exciting someone to the point of wanting to lynch the lawyer as well as the perp.
first, i would advise all of you, if you see a mama bear and think there is a rule about cub care that she is violating, DO NOT try to snatch the cub away. since all of us here believe in evolution, l would ask you then to consider exactly where evolution leaves off and everyone starts acting like a lawyer.
if the man with the baby had been a real kidnapper and the lady nurse had intervened physically she would very likely have gotten hurt… more of that evolution stuff. evolution just hasn’t caught up with the difference in strength between men and women. and if the man with the baby had been the baby’s father… expect even more to get hurt… see evolution re mama bears. papa bears don’t care so much. papa apes do. funny that.
second, don’t assume because you don’t like fresh air and hate cold weather that everyone feels the same way. some people hate stuffy hospital air.
third, if you are going to write about an incident, be careful of incendiary phrasing “assaulted a nurse.” “kneed her” “twisted her arm.” People respond to this stuff emotionally. at some point it becomes impossible for the alleged perp to get a fair trial. to be honest… and risk my neck… it sounds to me like the nurses assaulted him. and i can imagine the knee, and even the arm twisting to have had another explanation entirely. the nurses would not be the first people in history to complain bitterly after attacking someone that “he hit me.” consider how Rodney King directed his own beating.
Now, having said more than I wisely should about that, there is this…
Probably half of the electorate is unevolved primitive savages who like the manger story and the holy ghost… though they might not think of it in the context of assaulting nurses. and they might even go “uggggh, MINE!” when they think they are being robbed. I don’t know much about the Lion King.
It happens that I know a lot of these people. And they are mostly pretty decent. Some of them smarter than you think. But they are easily fooled… just like you are… by professional liars, and they can be made to believe that the people who despise them and despise what they believe… what they think their ultimate happiness depends upon … are bad people. Just like you think THEY are bad, ignorant savages. And they vote.
We are not yet at a time when the economy is SO bad that those people will ignore their deeper fears and vote for “liberals” who promise them better economic policies.
So I have several motives for resisting Rusty’s post, and all the “defenses” of it:
First, I am apparently an ignorant savage myself.
But, second, I hate to see my fellow ignorant savages voting for the Righteous Right because the Righteous Left has scared them away from sane economic policies.
And third, I really, really hate to see emotional people fill in the blanks on something they know almost nothing about and lynch someone because of their own fantasies which they read into the “reality based evidence.” I really, really hate that.
That’s why I have no friends.
Bruce
actually, i did not tee off on Rusty. I said I had been in a situation similar enough that I thought there might be more to it than Rusty seemed to think.
as for “all-but-lies”, I have been in situations even more similar than the hospital situation and I have heard the participants give their versions to the DA, and the only reason I attach “all-but” to the lies is that I am pretty sure the victims in question believed their own stories.
aside from my own all pointless experiences on the wrong side of the tracks… with, oddly enough, some people from the right side of the tracks who got pretty creative embellishing their versions of events… my academic backgroud… such as it is… teaches me that maybe 90% or more of what we think we “see” is in our own minds.
even here i thought i was being careful not to be attacking anyone for
anything, but the fact that i was disagreeing with them at all seems to be enough for them to conclude that i was ‘teeing off’, or finding major fault with, say, you.
unlike, say, a certain “expert” who is currently carrying around a grudge because i used the word “stupid” in a 300 word paragagraph, as in “wouldn’t it be stupid of us…” to conclude that i was not giving her enough r – e – s – p – e – c – t, i am pretty sure that when you think about it you will see where you were, ah, indulging in flights of fantasy.. say, about the Lion King. but I had thought the “kneed her” was someone else’s flight of fantasy and you were only repeating it.
so let me risk getting on the feminist male chauvinist pig list here… with first a disclaimer: my mother told me “never hit a girl” when i was young enough that the message became part of my prime directive. i am physically (if the brain is “physical”) incapable of hitting a woman. nevertheless i know from experience that if a 130 lb woman attacks a 180 lb man and he pushes her away, with his hands or his knees, she is going to fall backwards and fall down. it’s basic physics.
not so. you are no more guilty of filling in the blanks than anyone else, including me. but that says a lot.
Bruce
actually, i did not tee off on Rusty. I said I had been in a situation similar enough that I thought there might be more to it than Rusty seemed to think. go look at what i wrote.
as for “all-but-lies”, I have been in situations even more similar than the hospital situation and I have heard the participants give their versions to the DA, and the only reason I attach “all-but” to the lies is that I am pretty sure the victims in question believed their own stories.
aside from my own all pointless experiences on the wrong side of the tracks… with, oddly enough, some people from the right side of the tracks who got pretty creative embellishing their versions of events… my academic backgroud… such as it is… teaches me that maybe 90% or more of what we think we “see” is in our own minds.
even here i thought i was being careful not to be attacking anyone for anything. but the fact that i was disagreeing with them at all seems to be enough for them to conclude that i was ‘teeing off’, or finding major fault with, say, you. not so. you are no more guilty of filling in the blanks than anyone else, including me. but that says a lot.
unlike, say, a certain “expert” who is currently carrying around a grudge because i used the word “stupid” in a 300 word paragagraph, as in “wouldn’t it be stupid of us…”, to conclude that i was not giving her enough r – e – s – p – e – c – t, i am pretty sure that when you think about it you will see where you were, ah, indulging in flights of fantasy.. say, about the Lion King. but I had thought the “kneed her” was someone else’s flight of fantasy and you were only repeating it.
so let me risk getting on the feminist male chauvinist pig list here… with first a disclaimer: my mother told me “never hit a girl” when i was young enough that the message became part of my prime directive. i am physically (if the brain is “physical”) incapable of hitting a woman. nevertheless i know from experience that if a 130 lb woman attacks a 180 lb man and he pushes her away, with his hands or his knees, she is going to fall backwards and fall down. it’s basic physics.
now if it turns out that the K man was drunk or arrogant or belligerent, everything i have said will count for nothing, or be used against me. that’s the risk i take. meanwhile for christs sake… if that is not offensive… try to learn to step back a little and tell when you are overreading– or overstating — the evidence. it is a universal feature of human cognition and leads often to injustice… and of course sometimes a complete failure to understand social security.
And f if anything had gone wrong you would have blamed the ______________.
Why wouldn’t I understnad, being a parent and grandparent?
Fair enough.
This is one of a long series of posts on health care labor issues, regulatory issues, legal issues and general operations. I find it interesting that so many people think economists and politicians are the best source of information on the health care system.
It was written to be a little snarky, perhaps like some of the political rants that seem to have infested this site lately.
Anyway, back to the real isses:
There are shortages of nurses in difficult areas, including those in which nurses are being assaulted.
Law enforcement rarely gets involved, as “the patients can’t help it” seems to be the thought pattern. In some repects that is correct.
Nurses are generally disrepected (Mrs. R. has a Top 10 reasons nurses are disrepected list on one of her clipboards).
Nurses have been given increased responsibility without an increase in authority, a serious problem.
Obamacare does more for government bureaucrats and lawyers than for nurses (Hillary Clinton was a genuine advocate for nurses in the Senate, I miss her).
The thing about Fox News was a failed attempt at humor (I deletd the lines about daddy Kennedy being a protege of Tailgunner Joe).
Have a nice day.
So I get home from a couple of days on the road and Mrs. R is really stressing.
Me: So what went wrong dear?
Mrs. First the mandatory inservice on managing stress went overtime, andi got a late start and that really stressed me.
Me: Ok.
Mrs. Then Dr. X came in to do grand rounds. The guy in room 12 told him I had doubled his medicines and was trying to poison him. He threatened to sue both of us for everything we owned.
Me: And?
Mrs. Dr. X winked at me, told the man he was cutting his med orders in half so he wouldn’t be poisoned, and ran out of the room laughing. The patient called me a half a dozen dirty names and I left.
Me: Wow
Mrs. Then the hospital screwed up the paperwork on the new admission, and pharmacy delivered the wrong meds, and one of my aides had to go home after spending two hours in the bathroom barfing.
Me. Ugly, so what is that you are working on?
Mrs. My 401(k) statement, I need to retire – soon.