One patient threatened to shoot Dr. Terry Hunt if physical therapy didn’t relieve his pain as effectively as opioids did. Another harassed his staff, then roamed a hospital searching for Hunt after being told he would be weaned off painkillers he had used inappropriately.
Hunt was unharmed, but shaken enough to ask the central Illinois hospital system where he worked to dismiss both patients.
So when he heard about Tuesday’s attack at a medical clinic in Buffalo, Minnesota, that left one person dead and four injured, “the first thing I assumed is that it was something to do with pain medication,” said Hunt, who now works for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and a Mayo Clinic Health System facility in Red Wing, Minnesota. “It makes us ask about our own workplace: How secure are we?