Journal of healthcare protection management : publication of the International Association for Hospital Security最新文献

In this article, the author spells out the flaws and omissions in the way background checks are conducted, especially by hospitals. He provides pointers on avoiding these flaws and their potential costs.

This article has been prepared for the Journal as a permanent record of the beginnings and development of IAHSS, with the assistance of two of its charter members as well as current staffmembers.

The training of professional public safety officers to meet the many and varied demands of today's healthcare environment requires both classroom training, discussed in the previous issue, and structured field training. Field training has been used effectively in law enforcement since the early 1970s, and in healthcare public safety since the 1990s. This is the third in a series of articles on all aspects of public safety personnel administration.

In this article, the authors present a detailed plan for hospitals of all sizes and police to work more effectively together to better protect staff and patients during an armed intruder incident.

How does the healthcare security professional protect patients, staff and visitors from harm in the face of a Family and Friends philosophy espoused by many hospitals, a philosophy marked by less restrictive visiting hours, free movement throughout the facility, extended dining hours in the cafeterias and a general feeling of openness? How are security professionals expected to deal with an increase in threats of violence in such a restriction-free environment? In this article the author proposes a number of ways to secure a facility under such challenging circumstances.

Although actual shootings in hospitals may occur rather infrequently, incidents that threaten such outcomes occur with more regularity than any of us would like to admit, the author says. In this article he relates such an incident, which, thanks to the combination of an engaged population, effective physical security controls, and an effective response allowed for the successful diffusion of the situation without loss of life.

Although the public's view of healthcare facilities is that they are inherently safe and secure, administrators and staff members in hospitals are very aware that they could be vulnerable to an episode of violence at any time, according to the author. Today, crimes, including homicide, are an ever-present reality in healthcare facilities, they report, citing recent studies which attempt to explain why this is so. The article is based on the introduction to the IAHSS and IHSS Foundation 2012 Crime and Security Trends Survey. The complete survey is accessible to members in the Reference Section of the IAHSS web page.

The author maintains that Long Term Care sites, specifically nursing homes, are the most vulnerable of healthcare facilities to natural and manmade disasters, and that casualties among the elderly in recent hurricanes and tornados have been greatly underestimated.

Natural disasters, new diseases, increased violence, combined with cuts in Medicare and Medicaid funding will be among a host of developments that will challenge healthcare security professionals in the next three decades, according to the authors, and require changes in crime control methods, greater reliance on metrics, and development of innovative practices to survive and flourish.

Learning from the experiences of employees of St. John's Hospital, Joplin, MO, which was severely damaged in a devastating tornado, a healthcare system in New Jersey drastically revised its weather emergency preparedness system. The author describes how the system was revised and how it was employed in actual disasters, including Hurricane Sandy.