I have been following the story of the Utah ED nurse's arrest with some interest since the video first broke. Amid all the outrage and anti-cop sentiment, it's hard to learn any facts, but some have come out, and it's interesting to me.
It's interesting to me because as the Medical Director of a busy Emergency Department here in Texas, I most emphatically don't want anything like this to happen in my ED. The fact that it happened ANYwhere is a testament to what I call the supremacy of Bossiness and the failure of Leadership.
Here's my short summary of the case. If I'm substantively wrong in any point, please feel free to correct me and I'll change the OP:
1. Professional driver, driving a semi, gets hit by another vehicle; CDL laws apply here, and he must submit a blood sample by law. By signing his CDL license, he has given consent to this in advance for the rest of his professional driving life.
2. Professional cop, who is also a trained forensic phlebotomist, is dispatched to the ED to collect the blood sample that is required by law.
3. Profesional nurse, citing hospital policy, and acting as a "patient advocate" tells cop he can't take the blood sample.
So far, it's pretty straightforward. But then:
4. Cop calls his supervisor, who tells him he MUST get the blood sample NOW, based on his understanding of state and federal law governing MVC's involving CDL drivers.
5. Nurse calls her hospital administrator, who tells her she MUST NOT allow him to do so without a warrant, following hospital policy (which may or may not be in compliance with EMTALA, HIPAA, and other healthcare law).
6. Cop supervisor tells cop he must arrest the nurse and then get the blood sample.
7. Cop arrests nurse.
8. Video gets posted on YouTube and the Entire World Loses Its Mind.
Does anyone else see the big problem here? Does anyone else notice that the two people who were insisting that nobody back down were not even present? How the feck do you justify putting your people into that position without being there in person to back it up?
Look, I know that tempers can run hot in emergency situations. I work in that kind of environment every day. People get short-tempered, and say and do things that they would never do if there was time to talk it over and make a rational decision based on the best information at hand. And when people DO take the time for a time-out, and come to a mutually agreeable solution, everybody wins.
I have been in the position of the supervisor in this deal. On several occasions my phone has blown up with calls from my charge nurse, my ER doc on duty, the hospital administration, the nursing supervisor, and God knows who else, and ALL of them are blowing a gasket over some situation or other that has escalated out of hand really, really fast.
My response in each case has been as follows:
1. Tell everyone to back away from the situation, and
2. I drive in to the ED immediately.
Each time I have done this, the situation has either completely or partially resolved itself by the time I arrive. My job then has been to speak to all the parties individually, then make a judgment based on all the information. At which point all the principals breathe a sigh of relief, and say, "Fine, that's good with me."
Every time.
But in this situation, I see two professionals, a nurse and a cop, put in a situation where their respective supervisors are instructing them to do the exact opposite of what I have found to be the only way to get a just and equitable solution to a dangerous conflict. The hospital supervisor isn't a lawyer, nor a law enforcement expert. The police supervisor isn't a lawyer, nor a healthcare law expert. But neither one admits that they don't know the whole story, and then they insist that the frontline cop and nurse just bull ahead.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I think that nurse and that cop need to have a sit-down with a professional mediator to figure out how what they both did was partly right and partly wrong, and I wouldn't be surprised if they both carry a grudge for the rest of their lives. But it wasn't their fault. It was their supervisors' fault this turned into a first class Charlie Foxtrot.
But the supervisors on both sides should have their asses fired with extreme prejudice. Because in a situation that called for leadership, they BOTH failed miserably. They both decided they had to be a BOSS instead of being a LEADER.
Imagine the difference in this scenario if both supervisors had said, "Hold on, don't do anything, I'll be right there," and then got in their cars and sped to the hospital. Imagine the supervisors taking their people aside privately and getting the facts and the history of the conflict. Imagine the supervisors then sitting down in the coffee room and deciding how to solve the issue. Maybe they would have remained at a standoff, or maybe they would have reached an agreeable compromise. Maybe they'd have to get a judge to sign a warrant, or maybe they'd have just said, "Feck it, this is too trivial a problem for us to get in a snit over, let's all go get a beer."
I guaran-fecking-tee you that would not have made it on to YouTube and Facebook. But it would have been the right thing to do.
Leadership is real. Leadership is necessary. And leadership was absolutely absent in that Utah ED that day.
Last edited by DocRocket; 09/03/17. Reason: spelling
