Keeping Our Hospitals Safe The Last Refuge Of The Sick And Injured Is Not Immune To Violence

(From For the Record, September 25, 1996:) Staff writer Kevin Blocker wrote the story about hospital security on Page A1 of Tuesday’s Spokesman-Review. His byline inadvertently was omitted.

A security guard wrestles a knife away from a Spokane psychiatric patient trying to slice his own throat.

An 80-year-old man grabs a knife and chops off a nurse’s finger at another Spokane hospital.

A man walks into a Coeur d’Alene intensive care unit and fatally shoots his brain-damaged brother, comatose after a logging accident.

More than ever, Inland Northwest hospitals have become a mirror of a violent society.

The person most at risk of being injured on the job - ahead of police officers, bartenders and taxicab drivers - is the health care worker, according to the Washington Department of Labor and Industries.

In the past six months, three people have threatened to commit suicide by jumping from the upper levels of the Sacred Heart Medical Center parking garage. Two of them were psychiatric patients.

“We haven’t had anything fatal happen yet, but we’ve had a lot of near misses,” said Michael Stultz, director of security at Sacred Heart.

An office closet at Sacred Heart contains nearly 200 knives and switchblades that have been taken from patients and visitors.

Stultz’s staff has confiscated guns, machetes, 2-by-4s, and tree branches from people entering the building.

Hospital patients and visitors bring their domestic disputes, gang-related spats and mental illness through the doors. Most hospitals keep the names of certain patients secret to discourage visitors.

“It’s one thing to get a gang member in here, treat them for a night and release them, but it’s even tougher to have them in here for a week and try to keep their identity and location a secret from rival gang members,” said Ken Bayne, director of security for Empire Health Services.

The company provides security service for Valley Hospital and Medical Center, Rockwood Clinic, St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute and Deaconess Medical Center, which signed on about a month ago.

At Deaconess, roof-top security cameras film nightly activity at Second and Madison. Sometimes the footage is sent to the city to survey crime activity in the area. And a lot of that activity spills into the hospital.

In August 1994, Deaconess installed a metal detector in the emergency room area.

“About 400 weapons were recovered that first month,” Bayne said. “The second month resulted in a 30 percent decrease.”

Apparently, news of the detector has spread, because those numbers have been decreasing ever since.

“Spokane is not the sleepy little community it once was,” Bayne said. Security guards at Valley Hospital and Sacred Heart use hand-held detectors if the request is made by a doctor or nurse.

Deb Jamison, a security officer at Sacred Heart for more than a decade, has been kicked, punched and spit on so many times she’s lost count.

She once cornered a couple of youths in the parking garage who were breaking into cars and stealing stereos.

“I should have just notified the police where they were and let them come and get them,” Jamison said. But instead, she used a hospital vehicle to block their escape and waited for police to arrive. Later, “I thought, ‘Wait a minute, they could have had guns and opened fire.’ Fortunately, they didn’t.”

Hospital security officers are trained not to intervene unless lives are in danger. They are instructed to let police officers apprehend criminals.

Sacred Heart provides its staff of 25 officers with bulletproof vests. None has reported being shot at, though.

When Stultz went to work at Sacred Heart almost two years ago, he immediately replaced guards’ police-style uniforms with the businessman’s special - blue blazer, gray slacks, white shirt and tie.

“A lot of these people are looking to take out their frustrations on law enforcement in the first place. If you take that appearance away, you’ve already taken a step to eliminating some of their aggression.”

In a 1994 nationwide survey conducted by the International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety, 280 hospitals reported 1,577 physical assaults on their premises.

Until 1982, the typical hospital guard was either a former police officer or retired military official who usually hadn’t worked in a hospital.

Sacred Heart hired its own staff 15 years ago, and Deaconess did the same just a little more than 10 years ago.

“It was important to move health care security into a profession from being just an occupation,” Stultz said.

The 40 security guards hired by Empire Health Services have received counterterrorist training.

“With Spokane being so close to terrorist organizations, and being the recipient of terrorist activity in recent months, it’s critical for hospital guards to be familiar with what to do when facing such a situation,” Bayne said.

In addition to more training, technological advances have made for better hospital surveillance.

“From Deaconess we can control access for the other facilities we provide services for using a computer and telephone modem,” Bayne said.

Hospital guards also work hand-in-hand with hospital staff and patients when needed.

They’ve provided counseling information to domestic violence victims and educated patients on how to obtain restraining orders.

Perhaps one of the toughest jobs in hospital security is trying to create a safe environment for patients and staff without making them feel like they are trapped in the facility.

“It’s difficult, but not unachievable,” Bayne said.

He said it’s crucial for all the staff to participate in making a hospital safe.

“A few years ago there might have been some resistance to accepting that responsibility. But with the violence being what it is, safety is just too important to ignore.”

Stultz concurred.

“People are just so sick, it doesn’t make any difference to a lot of them anymore where they decide to act out their aggressions and frustrations.”

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