Does your Emergency Department have a metal detector? No? Then, read on.
These authors describe the installation of a typical arch-style metal detector at a single, Midwest, urban teaching hospital. Between 2011 and 2013, security personnel screened all walk-in guests during hours of operation, ranging from 8h per day at initiation to 16h by the end of the study period. In just two years of limited operation, they collected:
- 268 firearms
- 4,842 knives
- 512 chemical sprays
- 275 other weapons (brass knuckles, stun guns, box cutters)
Hospital maintenance also reported finding additional discarded weapons in the landscaping just outside the Emergency Department after the implementation of screening, while triage personnel also anecdotally noted some potential visitors turned away whence they came upon the security station.
Thus, the authors reasonably speculate their findings are representative – or even under-representative – of the weapons present, and concealed, inside their Emergency Department when security screening was absent. The authors do not simultaneously evaluate any change in reduction in violent events in the Emergency Department, but it’s a fair conclusion their department is now a much safer workplace.
“Weapons retrieved after the implementation of emergency department metal detection.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26153030