So much for effort being worth the reward

“Direct Threats require direct action”
-Dick Cheney

A patient threatened to kill me awhile back.

Hardly a new experience; in fact I’d have to say that a week doesn’t go by without someone threatening to do something to either me, my family, my pets, etc. I’m sure it’s a common experience for just about any ER nurse with more than a week or two of experience.

But what made this particular tirade different was the level of detail involved. This particular individual described how they were going to get a knife and cut my throat. When that failed to illicit anything more than a yawn this person began to say they were coming back with a shotgun to kill everyone in the ER. When my only response to that was to tell this individual that they needed to keep quiet now, they responded with the statement that their name was such and such and that I should remember it because they were going to “FU@K” me up.

As I said I'm used to being threatened, but a person crosses a line with me when they go from a general threat (I’m going to kill you) to a specific threat (I’m going to cut you Fu@king throat) so to be truthful I was pretty pissed off but allowed them to ramble on because:

1) I really had no choice

2) I wanted as many people as possible to hear these threats just in case anyone doubted what had really happened in the future.

The sad reality here is that as a “professional” I can’t do what I’d really like to do. So with little to no alternatives it was decided to pursue the one option left to us which was call the police.

What a waste of time that turned out to be!

While I’ll give credit to the local police for showing up, that was the extent of their reaction. From there the exercise for them seemed be about minimizing the situation as opposed to dealing with it.

When it was all said and done one has to wonder how different the outcome would have been had this individual threatened perhaps one of those police officers versus a lowly nurse.

Actually I don’t wonder at all; it seems to me that direct threats only require direct responses when someone deemed important is involved.