At Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, the pediatric teaching partner of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, being leaders in pediatric medicine, research, treatment, education and advocacy are the pillars of the facility’s mission statement. “As a security department, we try our best to look at all aspects of security to see how we can play directly into providing great patient care,” says Myron Love, CPP, PSP, Director of Security Services. “Keeping our patients, families and staff safe is our number one priority.”

Being able to work with patients and their families is Love’s favorite part of working in the healthcare sector. “I think a lot of security professionals don’t have the benefit of being part of a team that’s there to nurture as well as protect like we are,” Love says. “That’s a wonderful thing about working in healthcare – we can see the direct impact that the officers’ work has on the welfare of our families and patients.”

Working with families also creates a unique security challenge as Love’s team works to harmonize both the elements of security and nurturing. “Especially being a pediatric healthcare provider, we’re a very patient- and family-focused service, so it takes a delicate balance,” says Love. “We want to have strong security when it’s needed, but we also want to make sure that the perception of security doesn’t make families uncomfortable, and they’ll still know that we’re here for them in a compassionate way that other security providers don’t always have to worry about.”

Among his peers at the hospital, Love notes a sense of responsibility for security throughout the entire hospital, instead of just leaving it up to the security team. “We’ve got a lot of collaboration here. Other directors that oversee other departments understand the importance of security in their areas,” Love says. “Clinical leaders across the board have done a fantastic job in working directly with security to make sure that we’re involved in protecting our patients and staff.”

Love sometimes even sees clinical staff taking too much responsibility on themselves. “I’m always concerned about clinicians feeling like a lot of the issues they see just ‘come with the job,’ where they’re sometimes taking a little bit too much verbal abuse or just feeling like they need to handle these situations themselves because they’re there for the patient,” says Love. “We’re working to ensure that all employees realize that we are a resource for those situations.”

Patients and their families, as well as the C-suite at the hospital, are all very supportive of the security brand too. “Our C-suite has really embraced the concept of security as a very crucial patient care support function,” Love says. “Patients and their families seem to really value and appreciate what our officers are able to do for them as well. I have been very impressed with the feedback I’ve gotten from families on ways they would like to see more involvement and support from security.”

The way the organization is structured at the hospital “allows for a lot of cross-disciplinary input,” says Love. “We understand the full impact of how security decisions affect other departments. This organization is all about collaboration, so because some of the decisions that we would make impact families, it’s very important that we have stakeholder input.”

One of the most difficult aspects of the department’s job is getting employees to really understand that they need to be accountable and “be a second set of eyes for security and just support us. Security’s a limited resource, unfortunately,” Love says. “It’s really important to always let staff know that we need them just as much as they need us. It’s a shared responsibility, and we all have a piece of it.”

In order to assess how security is doing, Love’s department meets with risk management, legal and senior leadership in the hospital to discuss mitigation strategies. “We’re making sure that we’re doing much more involved and robust security risk assessments that don’t just look at raw data and incident reports. We’re getting input directly from people to make sure that everything we’re working on is actually making people feel better about coming to work every day,” says Love.

In his rare spare time, Love says he’s “kind of a kid at heart,” who likes to spend time with his son going to movies and comic conventions. “It’s a release from the high pressure stress of daily work, just to be able to relax and enjoy that.”

Annual Revenue:  Confidential

Security Budget:   Confidential

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