I don’t really think domestic violence has increased all that much; however, awareness of it and resources to victims are much more available, and people are also recognizing that it’s not just husband-against-wife. It can also be parent/child or between siblings or even people who aren’t related and don’t live together.
Well you KNOW they are asking for it when they put “Sex” on a form with a blank to fill in.
HA HA HA! I LOVE this one. 
Funny thing is that patients often think they are oh so funnier than they are or that the caregiver has not had to hear the same “witticism” many many dozens of times before.
Chefguy in today’s world a “joking” threat like that might get you dismissed immediately from a practice and police called. Even “joking” threats cannot be assumed to be jokes in a world in which people do come and shoot places up. Many large group medical practices have zero tolerance for threats of violence and people expressing their frustration (over their illness and pain, over insurance difficulties with coverage, over bills, with perceived lack of concern, with perceived misdiagnosis, so on) with such threats has, anecdotally, increased.
I have no idea if domestic violence is increasing or not but unreported domestic violence is, in any case, not uncommon and sadly large enough as a baseline.
That was 14 years ago.
Current US Preventative Services Taskforce guidance “recommends that clinicians screen women of childbearing age for intimate partner violence (IPV), such as domestic violence, and provide or refer women who screen positive to intervention services.” It considers the evidence for screening “all elderly or vulnerable adults (physically or mentally dysfunctional) for abuse and neglect” as insufficient.
If positive “interventions for women of childbearing age, including counseling, home visits, information cards, referrals to community services, and mentoring support.”
No not calling the police or “reporting.”
How would you know unreported domestic violence is increasing if it is unreported?
There has been an increase in my state , and there are cases that people don’t even know are happening .
I think it is possible that that “Do you feel safe in your home” is something mandated by the keepers, as an intrusionary tactic to deploy busibodies into one more aspect of your life. Like a school nurse, with your dossier, asking “Has your father ever touched you here?” Or, “Have you ever heard anyone in your home make threats against the president of the United Sates or the sheriff of Maricopa County?”
Occasionally in conversation about current events or something, someone will say: “Well, do you know what scares me?”
My standard reply is : “That scene in Alien where the thing pops out of the guy’s chest?”
I had broken my finger and was conferring with the hand surgeon on how things were going to happen to fix it. I asked if I would be able to play the piano after the surgery. And he laughed and said, “Okay, we’re onto that one. Can you play the piano now?”
The method would be to compare the same validated surveys in different time periods. The possibility of course exists that people of one time period are more likely to respond truthfully to anonymous surveys or face to face interviews than in another time period but it is the best they have to go by.
Corrected link. Sorry.
Also, in response to the common rhetorical: “Tell me something I don’t know.” I’ve been known to toss out : “Amazing Grace and the theme from Gilligan’s Island have the same rhyme pattern so each could be sung to the tune of the other.” Or some other totally non-pertinent tidbit of information.
Even “joking” threats can be assumed to be jokes in a world where there is a record of investigation of “joking threats” over the last 20 years, demonstrating conclusively that “joking threats” are predictive of no real threat.
Of course many orgaanisation do prosecute joking threats, but that’s out of (1) a fear of liability (2) an inflated sense of self-importance.
“So I farted in his general direction…”
I’d love to see the information about that that you apparently have that the receivers of said statements were always able to tell what was a not funny “joke threat” and what was not. That making a threat of harming someone and then laughing is a predictive sign of no threat being present or intended.
Patients do kill health providers sometimes.
I can tell you minimally that staff that have been the receivers of statements that the person who said it might have thought was said out of obvious frustration and not meant seriously have felt unsafe as a result. From our organization’s perspective our policy is in response to those very real staff fears, not fear of lawsuit or inflated importance. I’m guessing that the person who was on the phone with the billing department and said he was going to go over the the doctor’s office and shoot everyone there did not really intend to do that, maybe thought he was making a ha-ha, but the staff still felt unsafe as a result and the office still went on lockdown.
My sense of it is that actual violence is rare enough that the positive predictive value of a verbal threat (followed by laughing or not) is very low, but still real and the fear that staff feels in response to what the person thinks they clearly did not really mean (“I was joking!”) is very real. I may believe that zero tolerance is an excessive response but it is not a completely irrational one and our staff feeling safe at work is not something we can compromise on.
Yeah, cite please.
Doesn’t matter whether it can be so perceived or not. That’s irrelevant to the time-wasting and alarm caused by making the threat in the first place. A number of people have been prosecuted in the UK on that basis, though there has been debate about just how severe the penalties should be in each particular case.
(Back to the original premise of the thread, well, more a sort of medical dumb-ass reply: when my late father was in and out of hospital, he didn’t care for standard hospital-issued bedwear. To make sure this was noted on his records, the nurse looked for the largest available space on the card, and wrote “Likes to wear own pyjamas” - in the box headed “Sex”).
This was years ago, but my brother used to play Santa at kids’ parties and such. One day he was late for an appointment and was going something like 100 mph on the interstate. While wearing his Santa suit. Cop pulled him over and said, “You were going pretty fast, there, Santa.” My brother replied, “How do you think I get to all those houses on Christmas Eve?” He still got a ticket.
(He had to get his wallet out of his normal pants, which were in the trunk of the car. So a bunch of cars going down the interstate the week before Christmas got to pass by while a cop waited for Santa to open the trunk of his car and get his ID.)
The last time we tried a “new” restaurant, the hostess asked if I had reservations.
“No, I expect a few one star Yelp reviews. People being people, and all.”
We got a good table anyway.
Not sure if it’s smart-ass or just plain snarky, but I am single, yet when I walk into a restaurant by myself, with no other people around and get asked (Always!!) “How many are in your party” (or words to that effect). I always reply by looking around and replying “Appears to be one”. At least I do it with a grin so they know I’m not serious…I hope.
Are you ever tempted to pull a Lonely Guy?
For those who can’t view the link – it’s one of my favorite scenes from The Lonely Guy. Steve Martin goes into a fancy restaurant and asks for a table for one. Everyone stops talking, a spotlight turns on him, and the staff make a big production of clearing all the unused plates and silverware from his table. Then he pretends to be a food critic and the staff start falling over themselves to make him happy.