Safety

A respiratory therapist in our hospital was assaulted in a stairwell the other day. She was knocked around a good bit and the man took her ID badge and ran off. He has not been identified or found. He didn't attempt to steal anything else from her, keys nor phone; there was no attempt at rape. The badge was immediately deactivated, so I guess he'll have to pay the $2 to get out of the garage. When I think about the things that could have happened, I get the willies.
Our hospital has been involved in some acquisitions in the past several years. As they continue to grow and expand, the other facilities are converted for use as necessary. The building I work in, where this occurred, is one such facility. Once a hospital of its own right, for the past 10 years or so it contained mostly admin. offices and - of course - psych. Slowly, they began to add one medical floor, and then another, and now plans for yet one more. They have built a cross-over to connect the two hospitals and now have a tunnel for patient transport between them as well.
The tunnel has cameras every few yards.
The major public access areas also have security cameras.
We have security personnel who make rounds at least once per shift.
While the bulk of the secure-ness is maintained at the "main" campus (especially the ER), we never really worried much about our building.
On our floor, we have three security cameras to monitor the patients in the hall and the people who wish to gain access at the front door - but none of these have feeds to the security office. If we aren't sitting at the nurses' station to watch the monitors, we have no idea what is going on.
They don't record.
There are no cameras in the stairwells, nor near the entrances to the stairs or elevators.
Whoever did this probably had a pretty good idea of when the last security officer passed through, and just waited for the right moment to jump.
What did he want? Why her? She didn't have keys to any med room. Her badge didn't allow access into our top-secret alchemy lab. She holds no clout with the HMOs.
Coming off shift tonight, walking the long empty halls to the parking garage, knowing that one camera's view drops off for about 10 yards before the next one picks up, and peeking into every cubby hole, blind corner, and sunken doorway along the way, I wished I had my pepper spray. Or an alarm. Even a whistle. But who would hear it? The areas I had to navigate are quiet and without traffic at midnight. Should I have asked for a chaperone?
How safe do you feel at work?

Luckily, my neck broke my fall.

I receive several visits a day, though my lack of comment(er)s seems to prove otherwise.

Along with random landings and those lent in my direction from other's lists, I garner some unusual search hits, as well.

Today's weird inquiry :

"Do rectal swabs hurt?"

My guess is, you may feel some slight discomfort.
I'm saying, is all.

Can't quite figure out what content in my blog led this person to me of all places, but what the heck.

And anyway, I should be thankful for the attention. Seems I have fallen off of some high-profile blogrolls, and it sort of makes me sad. Sure, my content hasn't been all business lately, and that's because I have a life full o'crap going on at the moment. Glad I don't need to feel validated or anything trivial like that.

As such, I'm sure the bloggers I read appreciate positive affirmations too; therefore, I'll try to be a better blogger & commenter, and I will finally put together my very own link-list. So there.

How 'bout this weather, huh? Friggin' awesome. Now, if I could just get my ice-cold coworkers to realize its effing JULY already and we can turn the thermostat down past 75, all will be right in the world. Put on a durn sweater, I'm dripping over here.