What were they thinking?

In a town where I lived for greater than 20 years, a criminally insane murderer recently escaped from a state mental hospital while out on a field trip to the county fair.  My first thought on hearing this news was “A field trip?  Really?  C’mon, we’re not in third grade here, people.”  Apparently patients at the state mental hospital are routinely taken on fairly well supervised field trips as a way to integrate them back into society.  While I agree with that reasoning and it may be appropriate for some patients, I wholeheartedly disagree that it’s in any way appropriate for a violent murderer who is still presumably unstable enough to be discharged from that state mental facility to be out on a field trip.  And it’s especially not appropriate for them to be out in a crowd like that filled with children.  And apparently I’m not the only one who thinks it’s not really the greatest idea to have this happening.  There are news reports that employees of the state mental hospital told administration they had concerns about the type of patients being allowed to go on these field trips.  Rules and regulations about this had not been changed, however.  There are also news reports that employees supervising the field trip noticed within moments this man’s escape, but it took up to two hours for administration at the hospital to notify law enforcement officials.  If that is actually true, it’s inexcusable.  As a nurse, I totally understand that a hospital employee’s first priority is patient safety and doing what’s best for the patient.  Those concepts drive all patient care.  But in this unique setting of a mental hospital where the patients often have a higher than normal propensity for violence, there is public safety to take into account, as well.  I’m sure at times it must be difficult to balance the two.  But in this case, it seems to me there was a breakdown along the line that lead to the public being put at risk.  And that needs to be corrected.  Immediately.  I have no doubt that by the time the investigation into just how and why this happened is done, some heads are going to roll.  Many members of the community are understandably pretty angry about the situation and going to demand some answers.  A spokesperson for the state mental facility has said this man is stable on his psych meds for another two weeks.  That’s all well and good, but what happens after that time?  It’s highly unlikely he has a supply of his meds with him to continue taking.  And even if he does have a supply with his, making sure he takes them correctly isn’t really going to be a top priority for him.  Are they banking on the fact they’ll find him before the two weeks are up and he decompensates and becomes even more unstable and potentially violent?  Are they willing to stake the safety of an entire city on that?  That seems like an awfully big risk to be taking.

***UPDATE***
The patient has been found and is back at the mental hospital without any injury to anyone.

Blessed life

I was on the phone with my mother today and I was jokingly whining about my “bad day.”  The lawn maintenance people woke me up too early with the noise they were making, I grabbed the wrong kind of cereal when I was at the grocery store and I don’t like the kind of cereal I ended up buying, and two lamps I bought recently just don’t go with the decor of my house at all.  Then I had to add that if THAT is all I can find to bitch about in my life, then my life is pretty good.  And really, it IS.  Those really are the worst things I can think of to complain about.  So I’d say my life is pretty blessed.  And on that note, I have a few photos to share.  They are shots I took recently while visiting Multnomah Falls, which is the second-tallest year-round waterfall in the nation.  The water drops 620 feet.  It’s really beautiful to see.

Camera Critters 75

I’ve been busy with work and some travel arrangements for my upcoming trip to Guatemala, so I’m again digging into the folder of photos I shot at the wildlife safari a few months ago.  Hope you’re not tired of them just yet.  To play along or to see other Camera Critters entries, click here Camera Critters Meme

Camera Critters

I don’t have any new critter shots for this week, so I’m digging back into my file of Wildlife Safari photos I took a few months ago.  There were some just beautiful animals I saw.  This is located in southern central Oregon.  If you wish to play along or see other Camera Critter entries, click here  Camera Critters

Mandatory Overtime

So, a few weeks ago towards the end of night shift as I was preparing to leave work my nurse manager for our floor informed me I wasn’t allowed to leave, we may need to mandate someone from night shift to stay in overtime for day shift.  She had been phoned by our staffing office at 4:30am letting her know we’d be very short staffed for day shift and to get her ok to call anyone in they could get to volunteer, even if it put them in overtime.  This was three hours later and no luck with getting any additional staff.  She was saying she hated to do this, and I could see the anguish in her eyes.  It was not a pleasant situation for her.  A few minutes later she told us (staff from night shift) that we were allowed to leave, no one was being mandated to stay.  So, of course, we all ran out of there before things changed.  In an interesting coincidence, I was riding the elevator down to the parking area with someone on the staffing committee for the whole hospital.  She explained to me that for a nurse manager to put someone into mandatory overtime the approval has to come from her, the hospital wide nursing supervisor on shift, AND a member of the hospital executive team.  It has to go through three layers of approval before it actually happens.  That was comforting.  It was nice to know that mandatory overtime is something all levels of management take seriously and it can’t just be done on a whim.  It truly is a last resort.  And that’s the way it should be.