A lot of the times our hospital security show up to my deescalation classes after leaving a job in corrections. One of the things we often commiserate on is that they got into corrections and I into the state hospital to try and help other people grow and heal but what happened is that we got caught in a loop of “what am I going to see next that I’m going to have to report?” I’m now working for a psych unit in a regular hospital which still has it’s flaws but none comparable to the state.

First you see a patient spit in the face of a staff member who has to be physically held back from hitting them (they actually told us we’re allowed to restrain our coworkers if that happens), then you see a staff member get called racial slurs and they get up in the patients face and yell at them and you have to get between them and tell your coworker to take a walk but it’s hard to get them to do that because it’s 2am and there’s no other techs on the unit and they know the nurse isn’t gonna come out to help you before it’s too late. And those reactions make sense and you wonder why they’re packing you in with so many patients that your coworker can’t just walk away. And then you see somebody posture and yell at a patient who’s just all around rude but again it’s 2am and you can’t make it to 7 with just one tech.

And you also know that you’re going to need to choose the moment that it’s too much and that’ll be the end. Because if you stay after that you become the “them” in the “us vs them” and one day you’re going to face a violent patient at 2am and the tech who’s with you will leave you alone with that patient because “I don’t want you to report me too.”

And if you’re smart, you get out before it gets that far. One day a nurse asked me what I’d seen happen and I told them (truthfully) that I’d been at lunch and had no idea what they were talking about and they cut the conversation off. And I had no idea what patient or staff member it would’ve been about (as far as I could tell all of the patients were the same as before I’d gone to lunch) so I couldn’t have reported anything anyway. But I had to ask myself if I had seen something what would I have been asked to cover up?

I said that to that hospital security worker coming from corrections and there was this instant look of recognition. Anybody who’s worked corrections or for the state will tell me something similar happened to them, or worse. And I just… You either get out or something awful happens. I’m so grateful I was able to get out before I personally got pulled into something. You think you’ll be able to be different but that system is just so much bigger than you. And it’s not because I’m a better person it was luck. Part of it was luck that I had enough formal and informal education to know what was coming but some of it was pure grace of the universe luck.

And people who are outside of it living their happy lives will tell you they want a better system, but they will never truly be willing to put in the work needed to change it or even give you the resources to do it yourself. Like I’d been a patient at that state hospital previously and went back as a staff member to try and help and being a staff member was just so much worse somehow. I’m grateful that it gave me the experience to do what I do now and be an authority / teacher in the management of violent patients but it was hell while it was happening (I was also in therapy for other stuff at the time and was sooo fortunate to be given that opportunity to properly contextualize the experience as it was happening). No one who’s never been through that will ever really understand.