What’s the rush, pal?
While we generally think of exercise of due diligence in financial terms, it is really more of an approach to doing business and, indeed to leading our lives. We were reminded of this the other day when talking with a friend who is a leading trainer in the field of hospital security.
He had received a call from a mental hospital interested in training in defensive tactics when dealing with unruly cases, and had asked for examples. He was given two. In the first, a patient had dropped to the floor and refused to get up. In the second, a woman refused to get out of bed, instead gripping the handrails on the bed so tightly that she could not be moved. In both cases this was annoying and inconvenient for the staff. In neither case was the subject acting out, nor did they present any danger to themselves or others.
Since this was a mental hospital, where it was not unreasonable to expect irrational behavior from the patients, our guy asked why they didn’t put cones – or chairs – around the person on the ground so nobody would trip over them, and why they didn’t wait for the woman in the bed to become tired or bored, and let go of the handrails on her own. He was told that, as was the case at Waco, the patients had been give ample time to cooperate, and that some firm action was thus needed. He declined to do business with the hospital.
The next day he received a call from the hospital’s director, asking why he had turned down their business. He explained the he believed that the hospital staff was out of control, and that he fully expected that they would end up needlessly injuring a patient. The hospital was, in his opinion, a lawsuit looking for a place to happen, and the when the lawsuit took place he did not want to be a named party.
The director agreed that the staff was out of control and noted that in the case of the patient on the ground, the specific instructions had been to leave the patient there, making sure he did not get injured by people using the corridor. Instead, two orderlies had grabbed his arms and picked him up, dislocating both shoulders in the process.
Since our guy had quite properly refused to work with the hospital, the director felt he might be the right person to come in and help deal with what they considered to be an endemic and dangerous problem. We will wait to see what happens on this one.
