Joe Robertson, MD - President of OHSU
OHSU President
Sent by email 10 24 2008
Dear Joe,
I was contacted yesterday by a colleague, a mental health advocate, who asked for advice about an OHSU survey about giving your security guards pistols and rifles.
For your reference I have been an active advocate here in Portland for persons with mental illness and addiction for over 20 years. I serve as secretary to the board of the Mental Health Association of Portland and act as it’s spokesperson. For more information about our organization, see our web site at www.oregonarchive.org. Because we do our business in public, I’ve shared this letter on our web site.
Arming hospital security guards with deadly force poses an immediate and active threat to persons with mental illness, and also to persons who are confused, drunk, disoriented, demented or strange.
OHSU is an emergency hospital and a trauma hospital. It has a large, active psychiatric ward. Hundreds of persons of all sorts and with all sorts of disorders which make communication with authorities difficult come to this hospital every day for help.
And predictably persons seeking treatments from hospitals like OHSU have often waited longer than they should and therefore are in more distress. This economic fact can be anticipated and responded to with compassion, with understanding, and with tactics.
Hospitals need to be a haven of hope, of serenity, of change and of peace for just these kind of people. You have a choice: anticipate distress and respond with compassion – or with gunfire. Which choice matches the mission of your hospital?
From our perspective, adding guns to this situation is never a good idea. It never leads to safety or security. It always leads to a patient or prospective patient getting shot. It always leads to a false sense of security. And security guards requesting pistols and rifles is always the result of under-training and under-management.
The Portland Police Bureau’s policy is officers cannot bring guns into hospitals unless there is a emergency call. This policy is the result of three Portland officers shooting and killing a patient at a psychiatric hospital in 2003.
For the Portland Police Bureau – guns and hospitals don’t mix. OHSU should be no different.
If OHSU does change it’s policy to allow officers to use pistols and rifles while on duty, it is only a matter of time before one of our friends or family members is killed. Our organization would ask our supporters and allies to consider OHSU a dangerous place to seek help and a shameful place to work.
The request by your security guards for weaponry is revealing. It suggests OHSU doesn’t now have sufficient training for it’s security guards and ancillary staff, so they are less fearful of your patients, so they can anticipate problems with difficult or disoriented persons, and so they can respond with better communication or by calling for help rather than shooting one our friends or family members. If this is true, it seems exceptionally risky in our litigious world.
If OHSU wants to provide the best training security guards we suggest you consult with an expert at the Portland Police Bureau who train officers to better manage crisis, including persons with acute mental illness. They have fully implemented and improved the national model program for police management of persons in crisis.
Thanks!
Jason Renaud
Mental Health Association of Portland
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Dr. Robertson responds,
Dear Jason,
I very much appreciate your input. The matter of armed officers is a very serious one. I honestly do not know what the best solution is. OHSU is isolated and the literature clearly shows that if there is a shooter on campus a delay in response costs lives. There are also those on campus such as emergency personnel whose role places them at statistically significant increased risk for armed attack. On the other hand we do not want to become an armed camp nor do we want to put any innocent individuals at unnecessary or inappropriate risk. I personally do not know how to best balance these sometimes conflicting goals and that is why I have appointed a commission with considerable expertise and diverse representation to study the matter.
Your input will be relayed to them and I can assure you that it will be seriously considered by the commission and by me.
Thanks again for taking the time to express your opinion and concerns.
Joe
EXTRA – Oregon Health & Science University considers arming security guards, KGW.com
EXTRA – Public Hearing to Discuss Having Armed Officers on OHSU Campus, OHSU.edu
Bad People have guns.
No amount of talking will stop a bullet.
Shooting back at bad people will affect the person that is shooting at you.
Frequent and relevant armed training will minimize accidents and deaths.
Do not forget about all of those that were killed in the college out east.
All because guns were not allowed on campus. Guns save lives.
Albert, you believe we need guns at our HOSPITALS? Sounds like a place of stress, not rest.
Mr. Renaud,
You are an idiot plain and simple. You think the worlds problems can be solved with hugs even when mentally unstable people (often armed themselves) are threatening innocent people. Why don’t you put on a security uniform and handle the next unstable person that comes into OHSU out of control.
Facts that you can’t dismiss are that mentally unstable people can have no or low pain tolerance and super human strength at times. But don’t worry… we can run up and give them a great big hug when the other methods of “kindness” don’t work. Speaking of which… didn’t that mentally unstable man that was shot in the hospital RIP A STEEL BAR off of a door?!?!?! But don’t worry… if you were there and had given him his hug I’m sure he wouldn’t have clocked you in the head with that STEEL BAR.
You tell a one sided skewed version of a tragic event. I’d be curious to know what your position is with the Mental Health Association of Portland. I’d have to believe they would employ persons with integrity and not spin doctors such as you.
In your perfect world I bet security guards, the military, and cops are armed with ice cream and puppies. You need to wake up tomorrow in the real world. I hope you don’t speak for the Mental Health Association of Portland. If so you are giving that organization a bad name with anyone that has any common sense.
Camus,
Bad things NEVER happen at hospitals. Why don’t we just get rid of security guards all together. Hell take the locks off the narcotics drawers too. Nobody that shows up to a hospital is ever HIGH, MENTALLY UNSTABLE, DRUNK, EMOTIONALLY SPENT/GRIEVING, INJURED FROM A VIOLENT ACT, ANGRY, ARMED, should I keep going?!?!?!
You and Mr. Renaud should get together and go bowling. Sounds like you two might hit it off.
I work up on pill hill and I see what these guys deal with day after day. I wouldn’t want to do the job unarmed.
Oregon law states that ONLY the legislative branch of the State of Oregon has the right to restrict the rights of concealed weapons carry permit holders on public property in the State of Oregon. Therefore, unless OHSU is private, any permit holder may carry a weapon, concealed or not, on public property in the State of Oregon.
Enforcement of “administrative rules” to the contrary, by others, such as a districts or port authority, would be a violation of the law.
If OHSU is private, and on private property, they can make their own rules.
Oregon law states that ONLY the legislative branch of the State of Oregon has the right to restrict the rights of concealed weapons carry permit holders on public property in the State of Oregon. Therefore, unless OHSU is private, any permit holder may carry a weapon, concealed or not, on public property in the State of Oregon.
Enforcement of “administrative rules” to the contrary, by others, such as a districts or port authority, would be a violation of the law.
If OHSU is private, and on private property, they can make their own rules.
You nea-sayers, LOOK IT UP IN THE OREGON REVISED STATUTES!
A hospital is a place which has the mission, if not to heal, to do no further harm. Take a mentally ill person actively symptomatic with voices in his/her head, who is refusing medication and has a history of hitting people, who the ER doctors are assessing for a mental health hold. In the psych ward, assistants skilled in conflict resolution and RNs legally allowed to forcibly medicate him/her would treat the person’s immediate need for SAFETY, and later address ongoing needs and concerns from the client’s perspective. When an armed police officer is on scene, their orders are to maintain the safety of all people, and to keep order; when one person threatens safety, that person’s liberty usually is compromised by force for the sake of the group. The Hospital should be a place of santuary from violence. In the OED, an alternate translation of hospital is hospitable, meaning “protector of the rights of hospitality.” Hospitals should protect the rights of the mentally ill from death/injury by firearms. Mental illness is mostly misunderstood in the society and hospitals offer convalesence where treatment can be begun; they need to remain treatment focused.
Thanks for your comments Rebecca. I think it’s hard without personal experience for folks to understand the value of sanctuary and how the path toward sanctuary is sacred.