Maryland’s New Patients Rights Law Just Made Me a Legal Punching Bag
When I began in residential child care after graduating from the University of Iowa in 1974 I was appalled by the violence that was considered a necessary part of treatment. I am rapidly approaching retirement and I am now appalled by the willingness of providers and insurance companies and patient rights groups to violate employee’ rights to a safe work place.
It was almost thirty five years ago that I was hired by the Iowa State Training School for Boys as a residential counselor, called a Youth Service Worker in those days. Iowa has always been somewhat ahead in its thinking and was seeking to limit the use of violence as a method of behavior control. I have been appalled at what passed for maintaining safety and believed that much of what passed for behavior modification was more like abuse.
We have come 180 degree’s in my thirty five years and what once bordered on physical abuse has become a willingness on the part of insurance companies, treatment programs, Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Hospitals, and even the state legislature of Maryland to tolerate the institutional version of domestic violence.
Yes a couple of years ago a student was asphyxiated at Bolling Brooke. I feel heart broken for the family but the often overlooked statistic is that to be an employee of a residential program means you are willing to risk a 4 times greater risk of injury than for any other job including occupations like coal mining. Nurses and residential counselors in these programs risk a 12 times greater risk of injury according to OSHA statistics.
I have two fingers, one on each hand that are completely disfigured from intentional patient violence, that was not related to psychiatric disturbances but were willfully and intentionally done to injure me. I have had broken ribs, on each side of my rib cage, a broken wrist, the fingers, I have been bitten so many times I can’t even remember the number.
I used to do crisis management training for staff, and in the summer when I begin to get tanned you can see in several places the teeth marks from some of the times I have been bitten. My trainee’s would always joke that I tasted just like chicken. At one time I was being tested simultaneously, for eight bites to see if I had contracted HIV or Hepatitis.
Over the course of my tenure I have been whacked over the head with mop handles, broom handles. repeatedly with chairs and one child I was handcuffed too to prevent his running away from court, tried to drag me in the Cedar River to drown me so he could escape. All the while I was not allowed by state law to defend myself in any way.
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