To hell with the hippocratic oath!
With my experience with working with my mother at a facial surgeon´s office was the most dangerous paitents we had there were the prisoners and the welfare paitents.
Prisoners were brought to the office on special days with guards. You never were allowed to know what they did (which I think is bull, it should be tattoed on their foreheads, it´s frightening to not know whether this person stole a TV or raped and murdered a little girl) though you could usually tell by the number of guards. Two for nonviolent criminals, four for our death row buddies (who yes, your tax dollars are going to treat- they get better insurance than the vast majourity of most Americans. My favourite prisoner is the one who raped little girls and decided while in prison he needed a sex change surgery, sued my state when he didn´t get it fast enough, and got that surgery paid with my tax dollars. I can hardly get my insurance to cover surgeries I desperately need!)
The nonviolent criminals were usually the kindest and most polite ones- and probably there because of society failing them as most nonviolent criminals are there for. I remember packing up a bag of cookies for one prisoner and threatening the guards to give it to him after his surgery because he couldnt eat them before and when he saw them on the table in the room he was waiting in it looked like Christmas in his eyes.
As for the ones with four guards? We were in danger because a lot of the guards WOULDN´T DO ANYTHING. I´ll reference the Stanford Prison Experiment and how they found a few types of guards- kinder ones, ones that just go by the rules, and sadistic ones. That is absolutely true. Some of the guards were wonderful people and others made my skin crawl. The latter ones put us in danger. One of the violent criminals, when in the recovery room, decided to break glass containers of medical supplies and spit blood all over the walls and floor while screaming how he "couldn´t breathe!" The guards just stood around one said to the prisoner that if he didn´t "behave" he´d just have to mace him and then were would they be. That was until my mother screamed for them to get the hell out and get him back to the prison where he could recover or she´d mace them all.
In other cases a prisoner has gotten their hands on a knife or other tool, usually because, once again, some of the guards just don´t care. It´s very, very scary.
This isn´t to bash people on welfare, it´s just fact at the office. The only paitents that have ever gotten out of hand to the point they threw temper tantrums, broke things, and threatened the staff to the point we call 911 are welfare paitents. And they usually get this way because of their insurance not covering a cosmetic surgery they just /need/ or that we´re deliberately not getting them on the schedule fast enough.
For us, knowing the police station is just 500 feet or so away is comforting.
More secruity- that actually cares about their job- would help in a lot of cases. I hate to say this, but keeping an eye on certain types of paitents- especiallys ones with histories (yes, we keep records of who curses or threatens us when things just don´t go THEIR way so we know who to watch out for) would also work well also.