NEW ORLEANS—After honing skills in martial arts and boxing during the early 1990s, John Sutton was approached by several nurses working in home care, asking him to teach them self-defense techniques and to accompany them to troublesome houses.

 

No problem, said Sutton, who was living in Shreveport at the time. He quickly recognized an opportunity to open a business providing seminars and workshops with armed escorts for nurses in home care, and established The Medical and Escort Service.

 

Soon after, Sutton opened offices in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, and conducted seminars for the Home Care Association of Louisiana, National Psychiatric Home Care Association, Louisiana State University School for Nursing, and several other professional organizations. Concurrently, he graduated with honors from the Police Academy in Bossier Parish, and began working part-time with the Blanchard Police Department. 

 

"Then the crunch hit in home care, making billing for my services part of one lump sum," he recalled. "I saw the writing on the wall and realized my business would suffer from the new Medicare billing."

 

Not long after joining the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office as a full-time road deputy on the West Bank, Sutton was promoted to detective while also earning an applied behavioral science degree from Our Lady of Holy Cross College. When his wife became pregnant with their second child, Sutton switched from law enforcement to sales and sold The Medical and Escort Company.

 

Hurricane Katrina dramatically altered Sutton's plans. Four days before the storm moved onshore Aug. 29, 2005, he rushed his wife to East Jefferson Hospital, where she gave birth via emergency C-section.

 

"I remember it like it was yesterday, sitting in our hospital room watching what was about to hit the Gulf Coast," Sutton recalled. The day after weathering the storm from a hospital room, Sutton was summoned by his former partner at the Sheriff's office to help him, two EMT workers and two National Guardsmen retrieve medical personnel trapped in New Orleans due to rising flood waters. "My wife was an RN and I knew that I had to help."

 

After helping for two days from sunup to sundown, Sutton sensed imminent danger and put his wife and newborn on a plane out of state. By the time he returned to their New Orleans home, "it was like some huge bomb had gone off devastating the whole area," he recalled.

 

After assisting the St. Tammany Sheriff's office for another two weeks, Sutton reassessed the situation. With no businesses to sell to, his new job had ended. Determined to stay in the area, Sutton joined a local medical sales company, where he remained for four years. But the nagging idea that he could make a difference in the lives of healthcare professionals working in the home care field lingered.

 

"The OSHA Report contains surprising statistics concerning violent acts among healthcare workers," said Sutton. "Police officers have fewer incidents that lead to injury!"

 

For example, in 2008, nursing aides represented the second highest category reporting violent acts, with nearly 500 incidents per 10,000 employees, culminating in a total of nearly 45,000 incidents, Sutton said.

 

"This doesn't include all incidents," he said, "but only those that lead to missed days of work. Kind of scary! And you have to remember that there's little information about home care violence due to the lack of reporting methods."

 

Earlier this year, Sutton formed Guardian LLC, with the sole purpose of providing safety, security, self-defense training and consultation to healthcare providers. With the mission of "safety above all else," he developed a method for companies to better prepare their employees for verbal and physical assault.

 

The response was immediate. In the span of a few short months, Sutton has shared his talk, "Five Rules of The Road for Home Health," at hospitals, colleges, medical groups, and universities across the Gulf South.

 

On July 19, Sutton is scheduled to speak at the Home Care Association of Louisiana-sponsored Gulf Coast Home Care Conference in Biloxi, a multi-state meeting with representation from Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

 

"If you don't have a safety program at your agency, then you're leaving your staff vulnerable to incidents of violence," he previewed. "These incidents can be in the form of verbal or physical abuse, leading to physical and emotional injury."

 

Sutton said there's a misperception among agency supervisors that their employees know the risks and will report incidents.

 

"In reality, if you don't have a program in place for training and reporting, then these incidents won't be reported by your staff," he said.

 

His seminar centers on five key components for implementing a safety program in a home health agency: rules and regulations, education and training, preparation, implementation, and documentation.

 

"My mission is to change the 'culture' in the medical industry and make safety a priority for the medical community," said Sutton. "This can only be done through implementing a true safety program that covers all aspects of an employees work environment. The main goal of my company is to implement and maintain safety programs. There has to be a zero tolerance for any type of abuse because it's not part of the job."