By CAMERON LUCADOU-WELLS
UNARMED security guards say they are being denied the use of reasonable force to protect staff from violent visitors at Dandenong Hospital’s emergency department.
Guards past and present say they have regularly faced armed drug-fuelled or mentally ill visitors in the emergency department, yet have been forbidden to carry handcuffs, batons or capsicum foam.
One guard estimates they seize a knife a week, yet are forbidden by managers to do so much as an arm-hold – pulling a person’s arm behind their back.
Patients high on crystal meth (ice) were almost impossible to physically restrain, the guard said.
‘‘A 35-kilo skinny kid on ice can pick me up off the ground. It takes three guards to hold them down,’’ he said, adding that, without protective equipment for security staff, Monash Health’s promises this week to beef-up security were meaningless.
‘‘If we could use handcuffs and batons the environment would be safer. At the moment we’re not allowed to put a person on the ground or do anything.
‘‘We’re not allowed to do our job.’’
On Thursday, guards at Monash Health’s Clayton and Dandenong hospitals met with Health Services Union Victoria No.1 branch representatives over safety concerns and the recent summary sacking of a guard assisting a doctor under attack.
Union officials say the doctor had been punched in the face by a female patient at Dandenong’s emergency department. As the patient prepared to strike again, a guard caught the patient’s fist causing her to inadvertedly fall from a medical trolley.
The patient sustained facial injuries due to the fall. After several scheduled meetings between the guard and management were cancelled, he was sacked without giving his case.
The HSU will challenge the dismissal in Fair Work Australia.
HSU state secretary Diana Asmar said the sacked guard, who had worked at the hospital for four years, was doing ‘‘the thing he was trained to do’’.
‘‘He protected another staff member from a violent patient but the hospital is too gutless to back him up.’’
Patrick Collins, a former security guard at the emergency department, says the hospital’s operators have long been in denial.
He says security seized hand guns, axes, cleavers, hammers and a wide array of blades during his five-year tenure.
By the time he left the hospital in 2011, he had been assaulted ‘‘hundreds of times’’, threatened by knives, thrown wheelchairs, iron bars, scissors and syringes and was a ‘‘nervous wreck’’.
‘‘People have put a machete through the front window of the triage reception. I’ve seen thousands of punches, thousands of kicks — threats to my life and my family.‘‘Instead of us using handcuffs, we see nurses sitting on a [violent] person to hold them down.
‘‘People can be holding people down for up to two hours waiting for police to arrive. If you’ve got someone so wild, they’re medically sedated. Sometimes they’re injected over and over again to the point of unconsciousness.’’
While Mr Collins was at the hospital, there was an unsuccessful push for guards to carry handcuffs.
‘‘They don’t want to spend money on safety. When we went to meetings with them, they’d sit back and laugh at you.
‘‘We had nurses training security [guards] to restrain people. They were saying if someone comes at you, you should catch the punch — people in martial arts can’t do that.’’
Mr Collins said guards should have batons and capsicum foam, but not guns, to disarm and control armed aggressors. A guard’s gun in the hands of a patient on ice or having a psychotic episode could be disastrous.
Mr Collins said several guards had left or gone on stress leave because of an alleged unsupportive environment. Others have been incapacitated by hand and shoulder injuries caused by physical struggles.
The Journal is awaiting a response from Monash Health.
