Fired Mercy security guard speaks out: ‘We were acting in good faith’
Springfield MO Oct 27 2017
A former Mercy security guard wants people to know that he and several others fired by Mercy acted with good intentions in tough situations.
Nathan Roberts, 25, was among 12 employees fired after an investigator flagged four cases of patient “abuse and/or neglect” at Mercy Hospital Springfield earlier this year.
A report, which detailed each incident, was completed in August and recently obtained by the News-Leader.
The document sheds light on a series of incidents this year involving physical confrontations between Mercy staff and patients which caused the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to threaten to end Medicare funding for the hospital.
Roberts described an incident in June in which another security guard tried to take down a patient outside the hospital. Roberts stepped in to assist and the patient’s head hit the ground, scraping his forehead. The patient was handcuffed, then released after local law enforcement arrived.
The incident described by Roberts matches up with one detailed in the report.
Roberts told the News-Leader, “A lot of things, without context, look terrible.”
He said what was not included in the report were the patient’s threats.
“He threatened to kill me,” Roberts said. “He threatened to kill my family.”
The report also does not document the dangers that hospital nurses and staff endure every day when working with patients, Roberts said.
“You don’t know what drugs they’ve taken, you don’t know what mental health problems they have.”
Roberts said he’s personally seen patients attack seven or eight staff members. It happens regularly, he said.
“I got pushed frequently. I got bit several times. Kicked. Punched. Slapped. I’ve had people throw pee at me — jugs of pee,” Roberts said.
Despite incidents like that, Roberts said he enjoyed working at Mercy.
“I loved making sure that not only staff were safe, but the patients were safe. I loved getting up and going to work because I know I got the chance to make somebody’s day better.”
Roberts admits that mistakes were made.
“We’re human beings, but we were acting in good faith,” he said. “Almost none of us deserved to be fired.”
Roberts described the June incident to the News-Leader. He said a patient in the waiting room was using bad language. Roberts approached him and asked him to stop cussing.
The patient responded that he is veteran.
“I’m a vet too, it doesn’t matter, we still have to act like decent individuals,” Roberts told the News-Leader.
The report said a few minutes later, the patient slid down onto the floor, visibly distressed. A friend who was with him asked hospital staff for help, saying that the patient was having a seizure.
Roberts said the patient was agitated and declined hospital care. He walked out on his own accord, Roberts said.
Roberts followed the patient and his friend outside and that’s where another guard on patrol duty joined them, he said.
Roberts said he remembers the other guard yelling, “You’re trespassing” and “leave now.”
When the patient and his friend did not move quickly, the other guard appeared to get impatient and started pushing them.
Roberts said he did not agree with the way the other guard was handling the situation. But he didn’t think it was appropriate for him to step in at the time — so he stood off to the side.
“Unless he is doing something against the law, we are trained to back up your fellow officer,” Robert said. “Because you don’t want to be contradicting each other.”
The other guard attempted a “one arm take-down” of the patient after the patient started shouting profanities in Roberts face, he said. He was unsuccessful, and Roberts stepped in to finish restraining the patient.
The other guard’s behavior was “way out of line,” Roberts said. “They should have never hired him in the first place.”
Roberts said he asked for a nurse to look at the patient’s forehead injury. The nurse declined to provide medical assistance, he said.
Roberts said he wishes Mercy would release the video footage of the incident.
“You’d see that I didn’t neglect or abuse this patient. I wasn’t even mean to this person and the whole time he was telling me he was going to kill me.”
Mercy officials told the News-Leader they are unable to provide video footage due to patient privacy concerns.
When he was fired, Roberts said, human resources gave him an option: Sign a “gag order,” which would prevent him from talking to the media or filing lawsuits, or don’t get severance pay.
To his knowledge, Roberts said, most others chose severance.
Mercy spokesman Brad Haller said Mercy does not comment on personnel matters.
Roberts said he doesn’t have any “hard feelings” towards Mercy. He believes the hospital was required to fire employees because of the investigation.
The results of the investigation threw Mercy into upheaval. The hospital continues to be at risk of losing Medicare funding in November, if it fails a follow-up inspection.
In addition to staffing and leadership changes, Mercy is implementing enhanced hands-on training and close monitoring of performance in “tense situations,” according to a statement from Mercy.
Haller said in a statement: “Today, Greene County emergency rooms are seeing twice as many patients struggling with addiction or mental illness compared with the state average. This poses complex challenges for providers and impacts patients, doctors, nurses, co-workers, families and visitors. We take these challenges very seriously and have enhanced our approach to training to ensure a culture of safety for everyone.”
news-leader
