Saturday, August 26, 2006
Protect the public with up-to-date bulletins
From the RoundTable blog
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David Wood
Wood is a veterinarian in Draper. He practiced emergency and critical care nursing for more than 20 years.
Approximately 18 months ago, while I was employed as an emergency room nurse at a local hospital, we had a violent episode that might have resulted in tragedy.
A man was brought in handcuffs to the emergency department. Several hours later, the handcuffs were off, and the officer and the man were engaged in a wrestling match on the floor of the emergency room, with the officer loudly instructing the man to "stop going for my gun."
The man was partially restrained, with the help of staff members, until police backup arrived.
I felt strongly that both the officer and the nursing staff, myself included, had made serious procedural errors.
I documented the events and submitted a "Tell Us" form to management, listing a variety of tragic outcomes that might have occurred.
I then suggested that "we use this opportunity to thoroughly review and improve our procedures related to psych and forensic patients ... and take dramatic steps to improving our process before a tragedy occurs."
The response was dismissive; it seemed that I was the only one who perceived a problem.
I join the rest of our community in expressing my deepest sympathy for the family and friends of those who died trying to protect us, and my thanks to the many law enforcement officers who valiantly completed their mission.
Once we have moved beyond celebrating what went right during those 37 hours and grieving over what went tragically wrong, I would ask that we take a hard look at improving our systems and procedures.
Clearly, the law enforcement organizations will be looking at protocols for taking prisoners to hospitals and will improve on their ongoing efforts to safely meet the health care needs of prisoners.
I spent Aug. 20 in Blacksburg in a home near the briar patch where William Morva was ultimately apprehended. Throughout that day, we were unable to find any useful source of information.
We learned of the escape from a neighbor, who learned from another neighbor who had been sent home from a walk on the Huckleberry Trail.
We tried radio, television and the Internet, including the Blacksburg Web site. Only the WDBJ (Channel 7) Web site had any news, with extremely limited updating.
Early the next morning, we listened to the local news on the radio, but there was no mention of the escaped prisoner.
Who is responsible for getting the word out, for telling people to stay indoors, to keep their children inside, and avoid jogging on the Huckleberry Trail?
Who is responsible for providing updates so that people, once notified, will know if they need to continue those precautions? The police? The town officials? The media?
I suspect that the answer is "all of the above," and perhaps more.
Someone, somehow, should have been communicating with the public. That is what I perceived, and that is what many Blacksburg residents are saying.
Residents, often unknowingly, were making potentially life-or-death decisions without sufficient information and guidance.
The fact that there were no hostages taken, no carjackings and no children snatched up from their yard should not lead to the conclusion that communication with the community was adequate.
My request to our public officials is as follows:
Please use this tragedy to learn and improve. Whether by task force or other means, communicate with the various organizations and with citizens to critically evaluate the events of those two days, including the dissemination of information. What worked well, what didn't work and, most important, what can be done to make things work better?
Sadly, our world has become one where indiscriminate violence is far too prevalent, and there will be more public dangers, perhaps of much greater scale.
We have the technology and resources to efficiently and effectively notify and inform the community of such events, so why not improve our process?
