Security!

After a very high profile attack on a staff member in a public hospital last week, there is a call to boost security in public hospitals.  This is not the first attack, in fact people working in hospitals face anger and violence frequently in this hyper-tense environment.  So something must be done.

A decision must be made!

So YES, increase security in public hospitals, it’s a no brainer.  Or is it?

Rather than deciding now, perhaps it would make more sense to think about the previous decisions that have been made in the past that may have contributed to the aggression and violence in our public hospitals today.

We decide swiftly in this country, we revere those who are decisive, we deride those who don’t decide quickly.  Naturally, when decisions are made swiftly there will be unintended consequences of those decisions.

Reduce the funding for specialist mental health facilities and inadvertently pressure will be placed on hospitals.  Increase the costs of gaining general medical assistance on a day-to-day basis and more pressure will be placed on hospitals.

Perhaps if more thought were put into the old decisions, if we analyzed, predicted and risk assessed all our decisions, if we thought about the best and worst case of all our decisions, if we paused before we made our decisions, then maybe we wouldn’t need to decide whether or not to ramp up security in hospitals today.

If you lock backwards you can see the link between decisions made and resulting actions, why not start looking forward?