“Back in ’82, ‘because I said so,’ was pretty much the way folks ran things. That’s not the way it is today,” she says. Now, in addition to traditional public safety training including first aid, defensive tactics/pressure points, policies and procedure, etc., all security officers are certified in nonviolent crisis intervention every year. In 2013, the Department of Public Safety also began offering the certification to the hospital’s nursing staff. Through Brine’s efforts, those nurses also receive continuing education credits for attending non-violent crisis intervention classes.

This training remains a major focus for Brine because it increases the professionalism of her staff. BJH public safety officers don’t just rush into situations ready to restrain offenders. They approach issues in partnership with the nursing staff and work to resolve the problem in a way that is best for all parties involved.

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“Everybody deserves respect regardless,” she says. “We deal with a prisoner population. We deal with the people who might have been the victim of violence or we deal with the person who perpetrated it, but they are all our patients and they all have to be treated that way.”

Efforts Improve Relationships and Hospital Culture

Offering this training to the nursing staff has also bolstered the relationship between the public safety officers and the nurses, while providing the medical staff with an understanding of the science behind the public safety department’s tactics. They now view keeping the hospital safe as a partnership, and nurses are more proactive than ever in calling the public safety team for help before a situation gets out of hand. For example, if a visitor displays behavior toward a patient that is deemed unacceptable by the hospital, the issue is addressed before the situation becomes violent or threatening in any way.

“The nurses are calling us saying, ‘We’re getting ready to go in and have a discussion with this family about their behavior and we want you to come along with us,'” says Brine. “It’s much more of a partnership, but believe me, that was an evolution over time.”

That cultural change is the result of the BJH training programs, which work to constantly make sure employees have the professional development opportunities needed to succeed and to uphold their reputation as industry professionals.

When asked ab
out the impact of the training programs, Greg Patterson, vice president of Facilities and Support Services at BJH responded: “There are so many. The professionalism of our teams and the safety of not only our patients, but our employees.”

Knack for Innovation Results in Efficiencies

Brine seems to thrive off challenges. She isn’t afraid to jump headfirst into a problem, ask questions and turn things on their head. “I like to dig in and find ways to do things faster, or smarter or quicker,” Brine says.

She also loves technology, which led to BJH becoming a beta testing site. At BJH, patient transport is part of the department of public safety. “Transporters” as they’re known, are employees responsible for moving patients around the hospital whether to a new room, X-ray, MRI or the operating room. Brine led the department toward testing and eventually implementing a teletracking system that greatly increased the efficiency of patient transport and even led to a cost reduction.

Now, when a patient needs to be moved, nursing floors request trips by entering them into the teletracking computer. The requested trips are then delivered to the patient transport dispatcher, who assigns the trip to one or two transporters. In the past year, Brine worked to add a television monitoring system to the teletracking system. The new television monitoring station shows crucial data in real-time, such as the number of pending jobs, how long a patient has been waiting and how long a transporter has been assigned a job. This technology allows supervisors to better monitor the work of their employees and improves the efficiency of how patients are
moved throughout the hospital.

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