With more than 150 hospitals throughout the U.S. now using or testing Tasers as a means of helping to restrain unruly patients, it's clear that a growing number of hospital officials see stun gun technology as useful. Whether such measures are ethical or not is up for debate, as a Washington Post article points out.
Dr. Jeffrey Ho, who works in the emergency room at the University of Minnesota hospital, argues for the use of Tasers against violent patients, telling the Post that "acts of violence do occur" and that "the best method of security is to be proactive." While Ho's perspective may be viewed as a potential conflict-of-interest to some, seeing as he serves as a consultant for Taser, a yearlong study conducted at Hennepin County (Minn.) Medical Center showed that the number of injuries relating to violent people on hospital grounds dropped by roughly 35 percent (from 31 to 21) after 40 Tasers were distributed to civilian guards at the facility.
"It really is only to be used by our protection officers in cases of imminent threat or risk of bodily injury to themselves or somebody else," Ho told the Australian Associated Press last year. "We have patients that come to us from jail, we have a mental health facility ... and we often get unruly visitors who come to visit patients or harass staff members."
Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor and West Jefferson Medical Center in Marrero, La., are two other hospitals that currently use Tasers. The Bangor City Council voted last August to buy a single Taser gun for police officers to use in the ER on difficult patients, while a security officer at West Jefferson recently made news for using his stun gun to control Derek Thomas, the 25-year-old nephew of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Robert Philibert, a professor of psychiatry, genetics and neurosciences at the University of Iowa, admits that Tasers are "better than a gun," but isn't so sure they should be used in a care-giving scenario.
"Tasers are still a threat, a symbol that breaches the trust and the understanding of the patient that you have a comprehensive, beneficent attitude toward the patient," he told the Post.
For more information:
- read this Washington Post article
- check out this Bangor Daily News piece
- read this WGNO ABC26 News brief
- check out this article published last year in the Sydney Morning Herald