Kmc Taking Security Seriously
Drunken visitors and emotional family members tend to be the most common security concerns at Kootenai Medical Center.
While North Idaho hospitals still are relatively free of gang-related violence, security is a growing issue, according to hospital officials.
“Just as Spokane’s changed, our security needs have changed because of the growing population,” said Roger Evans, KMC’s director of emergency services and security. “We live in a violent society.”
Both KMC and Bonner General Hospital in Sandpoint have stepped up security measures in the past few years, while trying to avoid going to the extreme.
“We’re not like one of the shoot-‘em-up E.R.’s like in L.A. or New York,” explained Val Olson, Bonner General’s spokeswoman. But, “everybody’s been looking at security a little more seriously the way the world is going.”
The biggest change at the Sandpoint hospital was a requirement to have hospital visitors in the evening sign a log and wear name tags.
Security still is provided mainly by the maintenance staff with backup from local police, she said.
“You don’t want to become a Gestapo-type place,” Olson said. “You’re a hospital. A healing place.”
Both KMC and Bonner General have stepped up staff training on how to de-escalate potentially violent situations.
Most of those are ones where people have been drinking or using drugs, Olson and Evans said.
In the evenings, KMC security guards where police-like uniforms, because, Evans said, it might make inebriated visitors control themselves better.
“We do get people who are trying to get even with someone, but the biggest, the largest bulk of our violent or acting-out behaviors come from folks whom you don’t expect it,” Evans said.
Staff members are assaulted “not infrequently” in the emergency room, Evans said. Several years ago, that behavior may have been excused. Now the hospital is more likely to press charges, he said.
In the past five years, KMC has stepped up its training, hired more guards, and designed its new facilities with optimum security in mind.
“We try to do it without offending the public,” Evans said, admitting that it’s a difficult balancing act. “Society has placed us in a position of smiling and saying, ‘Are you carrying a weapon today’?”
, DataTimes