Northern Alberta doctors push for tasers in hospitals

[TithonusSyndrome]

As if this shit wasn't everywhere already.

An emergency room doctor in Fort McMurray, Alta., wants security guards armed with Tasers or pepper spray to deal with escalating violence inside this booming oil town's hospital.

The Northern Lights Regional Health Centre has seen an increase in violent confrontations between hospital staff and patients -- including the recent assault of a security guard who was left with a black eye and facial cuts, said Dr. Brian Dufresne, chief of emergency medicine at the hospital.

Not a day goes by without at least one incident of verbal abuse or physical threats, said Dufresne.

"We need to take one step up on how we make the whole environment safer," said Dufresne, 52, an 11-year veteran at the hospital.

"Our guards don't even carry pepper spray. That would be a minimum. I know there is controversy on the Taser, but it would not be an unreasonable step.

"The third step would be RCMP to man the emergency. I would probably feel reasonably comfortable if we had at least two security (guards) armed with pepper spray or the Taser."

Dufresne said a large transient population coupled with high levels of alcohol and cocaine abuse fuels much of the violence.

Security guards sometimes work alone in the emergency room, where hospital staff are overwhelmed with admissions, creating long waiting times that leave patients frustrated, he said.

"This could easily escalate into something more serious," said Dufresne.

The regional health authority is reviewing the security situation, but said it does not support arming guards.

"It doesn't seem to be where we would like to go," said Valetta Lawrence, the authority's chief operating officer.

"The RCMP is available to us if we need them."

Fort McMurray RCMP said they have seen no sharp increase in calls to the hospital. Police received eight disturbance calls last month at the hospital. They received six last November and seven the same month in 2005.

Const. Ali Fayad said the calls may not reflect the actual number of incidents because not all reach police. The hospital did not call police after their security guard was assaulted, choosing to handle the matter internally.

The underlined section is so goddamn true you'd have to live here to know the full of it, and would probably cause even the shrillest taser denouncer some pause. I still have to wonder if they'd be a disaster waiting to happen if they weren't restricted to the waiting rooms or anywhere inaccessible to patients, though.

[Eulogy]

Are tasers even effective on someone who's coked up? I'd imagine so, but then again there are painkillers that are so potent that you could have your face ripped off and not even feel shock.

[Erik von Nein]

It's not the pain that incapacitates someone, it's the disurption to the nervous system that does. The pain's secondary.

[Academia Nut]

Taser's do not work like stun guns which use pain compliance. They use electrical impulses cause muscles to go into tetanus and thus seize up. So long as the Taser is active, your skeletal muscles are no longer under your control, and without the active control required for standing, you fall over.

When you're hit by a Taser, no amount of coke is going to keep you from going down. The combination of drugs and electricity may be fatal though.

Of course, when you're so high that you don't feel pain, the beating needed to put you down may very well be fatal too, so I see little wrong with this situation.

[TithonusSyndrome]

If they prove effective in hospital waiting rooms, which they ought to if half of the shit I've heard about the impatient self-important plant workers who march in and demand service now now now I make four times more money than you little peons how dare you delay my gratification, then I'd like to see them in more places throughout the region. I've never seen a place where nearly every establishment has signs telling people that assaulting staff, verbally or physically, will see them have their service refused and a cozy ride in a cop car to boot so often that it's practically anomalous to not find one somewhere in any place you walk into.

[Phantasee]

Oh you crazy Fort MacMurrayans, with your drugged up rig hands...