Physicians as Targets of Medical Workplace Violence

In 2010, Dr. Davidson ran the Boston Marathon with Team Brigham to celebrate his 40th birthday.

According to a person who examined the thumb drive files that the son left behind, he laid out his research on amiodarone and concluded that Davidson was responsible for his mother’s death. “Not solely,” he wrote, but “the majority.” He concluded by saying, “The doctor is dead. I am dead. There is nothing more anyone can do.”²

He was on a mission that cold January morning. The heavyset man with the expressionless face, wearing khaki pants and a black ski jacket wandered through the hospital for over an hour, his trail recorded by the multiple security cameras planted throughout our facility. Analyzing his trail and timeframe, there was a possibility that we crossed paths in one of the busy walkways leading to the cardiovascular clinic. What was on his mind during the hour before his arrival at the clinic? Was he having second thoughts about killing the doctor? Was Mike his only enemy, the sole target of his rage? Or was he contemplating killing more people to avenge his mother’s death?

We live in a world where acts of violence are commonplace, and some have started to encroach upon areas that were previously considered to be immune to mayhem and madness.

Shortly after this horrific day, the long-awaited trial of the Boston Marathon bombing suspect began. The jurors were shown hours of surveillance videotapes that readily identified the suspect and his brother placing their backpacks on a downtown sidewalk, right next to a lovely family, a mother, a father, a young boy and a girl. They were soaking up the sun, enjoying the festive mood at the finish line. Just as Mike could not realize that his meeting with the son would turn tragic, the Richard family had no idea that the innocuous looking backpack placed on the sidewalk next to them concealed a jury-rigged homemade bomb, set to explode and kill their son, maim the mother and daughter and scar them forever. What senseless death and destruction.

Could any of these terrible tragedies have been prevented? The security cameras placed outside a department store on Boylston Street near the marathon finish line were able to record those horrible minutes leading up to the explosion and, ultimately, provided the critical clues that identified the perpetrators. Similarly, the hospital cameras could trace the comings and goings of the shooter, but they could not forewarn the staff of an imminent danger.