After security guards at St. Louis-based Barnes-Jewish Hospital shot and killed a patient who refused to drop two knives after pushing his way out of a treatment room Jan. 11, hospital executives are debating whether armed security guards make hospitals safer, according to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch report.
Approximately half of U.S. hospitals employ security guards armed with handguns, according to a national survey. U.S. hospital grounds see an average of 14 shootings annually. Emergency rooms are the most common site for shootings, followed by parking lots and patient rooms, according to a study by researchers at Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins University.
Here are five takeaways from the report.
1. A number of hospital executives think having armed guards sends a conflicting message and adds danger to the already tense and emotional setting of a hospital, according to the report.
2. Other hospital executives argue armed hospital security guards act as a deterrent to the threat of workplace violence.
3. Healthcare workers account for approximately 75 percent of the victims of workplace violence, with more than 11,000 reported assaults a year, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Although the labor department provides guidelines for preventing workplace violence in healthcare settings, it does not take a stance on armed guards.
4. Twenty-three percent of ER shootings involve someone taking a security guard's gun, which further complicates whether having weapons in these high-pressure settings is safer for the hospital's patients and staff, according to the Johns Hopkins study.
5. Although the Missouri Hospital Association provides training for active shooter situations, the organization has shifted focus to holding violence de-escalation seminars for healthcare workers. "No one wants to get punched at work, and that certainly happens a lot more than the patient or the visitor being harmed," Dave Dillon, vice president of public and media relations for the Missouri Hospital Association, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.