I work in a hospital too and a huge problem is that the medical staff don ' t have any idea as to what we legally can and can ' t do so if they feel threatened by a patient they think we can just restrain them , force them to stay or force them to leave whenever we want and legally that ' s just not the case . This is unfortunately exacerbated by some of the guards who will interpret the law in such a way that ensures that they do the least amount of work that is conceivable . For instance they will often instantly leave a ward if Mental Health paperwork has not been written up on a patient even if the staff obviously feel threatened . Yes it ' s true we can ' t force these patients to stay on the ward and we can ' t restrain them to give them medication without this paperwork but we can still hang around and reassure the staff and be there to defend them if something does happen . One thing that I do notice about your posts and hospitals in general is that the chain of command between security and medical staff is very unclear . Medical staff get very frustrated with us when they ask us to do something which seems very clear and obvious to them but which is , totally illegal . Yes , they should know the distinction but they often don ' t and when we can ' t legally comply with what they want they often become very frustrated and think we ' re just useless . In your post you mention an RN commanding you to do something . Winds you up right ? Well it cuts both ways . If you go around ordering medical staff to do things they will resent you big time . There ' s just as many if not more rampant egos in an ER as there are in security . Nurses especially can be bitchy as hell and no amount of training will ever alter this . Diplomacy is just as important dealing with them as it is dealing with a drug addict who ' s spiralling out of control . The main reason interdepartmental fights occur is because medical staff feel that they have been disrespected even though you may have followed the law to the letter .