One great thing about Court of Appeal opinions is that they sometimes give you a real-world glimpse into portions of society that you'd otherwise know little about. Today's opinion, for example, takes the reader into the emergency room at San Francisco General Hospital:
"San Francisco General Hospital is a renowned safety net hospital, particularly well
known for its emergency department. That department has a diverse and unpredictable
patient population, much of it consisting of the homeless, the mentally ill, and those
suffering from substance abuse problems. The chaotic population can make the
emergency department a dangerous place: staff have been strangled, sexually assaulted,
punched, kicked, and spit upon. Abuse by patients, both physical and verbal, is a daily,
sometimes hourly, occurrence. As a result, patient behavior is tracked in a database
provided by the Department of Public Health, so staff can communicate with others to
alert them of potentially violent or abusive patients.
This has also resulted in the development of protocols and procedures to protect
staff and patients. For example, patients without pending business in the emergency
department are not permitted to loiter. People who are sleeping or lingering in the
waiting area in the early morning hours without medical necessity are asked to leave.
And once they are screened and cleared for discharge, verbally abusive or physically
threatening patients are removed.
The emergency department is overseen by armed deputies from the San Francisco
Sheriff’s Department, who are on the premises 24 hours a day to provide security.
During the midnight shift, three officers are on duty, one at a podium just outside the
department waiting area, another at a post behind the security doors to the department,
and a third on foot patrol around the campus. There is also a dispatcher who monitors
security cameras throughout the facility, one of which is pointed at the emergency
department waiting room. . . . Generally speaking,
on a nightly basis several people are escorted off campus for verbally or physically
abusing the staff or other patients."
Better to read about it than have to go there.
