Juha Hyötyläinen, chairman of the Finnish Paramedic Association, describes taking a paramedic hostage as a reprehensible and horrible act.
Finland chairman of the emergency care association (Sehl). Juha Hötyläinen considers taking a paramedic hostage as a really reprehensible act.
According to the Eastern Finland police, on Saturday in Sonkajärvi in Pohjois-Savo, a man took a paramedic hostage in a private apartment by threatening him with an unlicensed weapon. Another paramedic was also there, but he managed to escape from the apartment. When the second paramedic was able to escape, the man is suspected of firing an unlicensed weapon inside the apartment.
The paramedics had gone to the apartment for a work assignment. The police have not said how the events in the apartment progressed. However, ending the situation required negotiations from the police.
Hötyläinen has not heard of the paramedic being taken hostage in Finland before.
“It’s a horrible case, I’m going to have goosebumps. Thank God they both got out,” he says.
According to the police, the first responders were not physically injured in the situation. Höytyläinen does, however, bring up mental injuries and the possibility of traumatization.
Useful the nurses’ association also acts as Tehy’s trustee. The 2020 survey conducted by Tehy, Sehli, Finnish rescue professionals and the Finnish Association of Contract Firefighters for first responders shows that violence is very common.
About 1,900 members responded to the survey. Almost every one of them had experienced violence or the threat of it once or more. About 30 percent of the threats involved a bladed weapon and about 9 percent involved a firearm.
“There are cases where people have been threatened with a knife or a gun or had to push the door shut when the other person tries to come through the door,” says Hyötyläinen.
Hötyläinen has been doing emergency and acute care work for about 20 years, mainly as a paramedic. In recent years, increasingly severe violence has been directed at professionals. Even teenagers carry bladed weapons. In France, for example, nurses are constantly stabbed and one nurse has already died, says Hyötyläinen.
In Finland, the headlines have included, among other things in April a case where a patient attacked nurses with a bladed weapon as well as of 2019 a case where a patient attacked a paramedic and an ambulance driver. In 2012 the father of the family killed the health nurse who was on a home visit.
“The world has certainly changed and unfortunately we are no longer in any birdhouse here either,” he says.
“In that sense, this kind of thing has unfortunately been expected.”
“
“A certain respect for paramedics has disappeared.”
In the year 2018 Hötyläinen himself experienced a serious situation with a poisoning case assignment.
“I thought the situation was taken care of and turned my back. I made a mistake not protecting my cell phone. That’s when the customer hit me in the back.”
In the situation, he also lost two teeth.
“I have often thought that a certain kind of respect for first responders has disappeared. We are no longer seen as helpers but as enemies. You have to use speech judo a lot.”
Efforts are being made to improve the safety of first responders with, among other things, threat and violence training. Since it is not mandatory for the employer to organize training, training is not offered in all areas, Hyötyläinen points out.
A concrete factor that increases safety is the increased use of protective vests. For example, in Southern Ostrobothnia and Päijät-Hämee, the vest is part of the everyday clothing of paramedics. In the rest of Finland, a vest is worn for certain task codes.
Hötyläinen adds that the employer should invest in protective equipment.
“Money should not be an obstacle to job security.”
In addition For almost five years, Sehl and Tehy have been pushing for a law change signaling zero tolerance, which would extend the violence against civil servants to include first responders, among other things.
“At the moment, attacking a nurse is equated to a fistfight, which will result in a fine,” says Hyötyläinen.
Now, the government program has included “among other things, improving the legal protection of care and rescue personnel in work-related violence situations to match the protection of civil servants”.
However, the unions would like the law change to apply to the entire social security sector.
Correction 8.11. 8:55 p.m.: The news previously incorrectly stated that no nurses have been killed in Finland. In reality, for example, in Lappeenranta in 2012, a family man killed a health nurse who was on a home visit.
#Dangerous #situations #Emergency #care #union #hostage #situation #Sonkajärvi #expected
