Stun guns used by police officers to incapacitate suspects are now being employed by some hospitals to subdue violent patients. In the U.S., 151 hospitals are testing or using stun guns made by TASER International, The Washington Post reports.
Stun guns work by shooting out metal prongs that lodge in a target. The prongs emit electrical pulses that have a paralyzing effect. When the electrical jolt stops the paralysis does, too. In most cases, the person regains full movement in a few minutes.
A 2009 study of 1,201 people who had been stunned found that 99.7 percent had few or no injuries, and the bruises and bumps that came from being stunned were generally caused by falls when muscles locked.
But a 2008 Amnesty International report found that 334 Americans died after being shot by TASERs over a seven year period. In most cases, drug intoxication was the offical cause of death, but the study concluded that at least 50 deaths were caused by TASER shocks.
Emergency room doctor Jeffrey Ho, author of a 2009 paper about the use of TASERs in health care settings, told The Post that TASERs can prevent potentially violent situations from escalating.
“The hospital environment is not 100 percent calm and peaceful all the time,” he said. “Acts of violence do occur against staff, physicians, nurses, those types of things, and really the best method of security is to be proactive.”
Robert Philibert, a professor of psychiatry, genetics and neurosciences at the University of Iowa, told The Post that the weapons are becoming a more common way to subdue patients in hospitals:
If dialogue fails, then generally a show of force is explored,” he said. “Physical restraint is a last choice.”
He added that the use of stun guns in patient units is “extraordinarily troubling” and that “in the hospital setting they should only be used with the most utter discretion — only in the context in which serious threat to life or bodily integrity is in play.”
Not only for Hospitals I prefer for each & every persons pocket all over the world should have at least one weapon for you safety.
The hospitals that provide this to the patients please explain is this the defintion the hospital adheres to or the fla. Statue. And do you no what statue. Are there any in broward county fla. . They also backorize you if im spelling or saying that correctly. It has happenened twice to my mom that we are aware of while shes in the hospitalcurrently. Any side affects or harm weshould beaware of.
Thankyou for your timein reading this
P.S. what can we do as her children