Safety and security is a number one priority at Seattle Children's Hospital and is recognized as being everybody’s responsibility. A safe culture is one that understands the hazards and risks that impact operations and encourages the reporting of potential and actual events.
Healthcare security is changing. As more and more hospitals form or join health systems or implement the Affordable Care Act, the standardization of security officer services has many advantages. The need for greater value from service providers, more efficient programs, consistent protocols for staff and patients and an increasing focus on both safety and security are positioning standardization of security services as a critical solution for health systems.
When the security team at Palmetto Health Baptist, an acute care Medical Center in Columbia, S.C., invested in an upgrade to their surveillance cameras from black-and-white to color, they did so with the expectation that it would significantly improve the quality of video they were capturing.
Rush University Medical Center in Chicago operates from a campus that spans four city blocks and 20 buildings, presenting some unique security challenges.
Approximately 11,370 healthcare and social assistance workers were the victims of workplace violence assaults in 2010 – a 13-percent increase over such assaults in 2009, and many more incidents likely go unreported, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Jim Sawyer has a lot of “friends for life” at work. Some of the “friends” Sawyer has made were at one time hostile, angry and frustrated clients, people tested by enormous stress levels.
And Duke’s security team assures it. “Thinking about the higher education and healthcare facilities at Duke, it is amazing what occurs on a given day. Students learn something that will change their life. Another person’s life will be saved at the hospital. A researcher will make a discovery that changes quality of life for others. There may be a wedding in the chapel. There is a high likelihood Duke will compete for or win a national sports championship. And we have celebrity speakers and lecturers visiting frequently. This is a very rewarding, exciting and dynamic environment,” Chief Dailey explains.
Given an increase in violence in the hospital setting and continued attention on hospital security programs, there is a need to examine current hospital safety and security practices.
