Hospital Security Department Needed Visibility
Terry also took steps to make her department much more visible to UNC Health Care employees. In 2014, few non-security staff members knew where her department was located, what the department did other than assist with patients who were violent or how to contact UNC police and security.
Her first step was to restructure the new employee orientation presentation. Terry then built a new website that was more user-friendly and provided current information about the department’s services, staff and safety issues. Another benefit of the site was that it successfully attracted new department recruits.
Additionally, she worked with her staff to build a department website, Facebook and Twitter pages for the hospital police department and parking and transportation department, and advertised them throughout the hospitals. These efforts enabled her department to announce weather updates, drills, road closures and more.
Terry’s department also worked with the hospital “Beacon Program” in developing a domestic violence response initiative to address any domestic violence issues that hospital employees might be experiencing.
Now, when a supervisor or manager has firsthand knowledge that an employee is involved in a domestic violence situation, the supervisor or manager must report the information to hospital police or employee relations. As a result of this initiative, Terry’s team receives several reports a month of these types of risks, which they fully investigate.
The management of forensic patients was another issue that needed to be addressed. UNC Health Care has the largest care contract with the North Carolina Department of Corrections (DOC) in the state, providing care for more than 8,000 NC DOC inmates per year.
Additionally, UNC treats about 700 federal inmates annually. Terry assigned a forensics liaison to ensure that corrections officers are oriented properly and conform to contractual agreements. This officer also trains UNC security and police officers on how to complete a risk assessment for each inmate who receives care at UNC.
Terry Unveils Several Crime Prevention Initiatives
Her department’s crime prevention and safety efforts also benefited patients, visitors and even the general public.
In an effort to reduce patient property loss, Terry and her team won support for and oversaw the installation of patient room safes. They were also able to convince the neuroscience hospital to purchase a Pyxis machine and dedicate it to the storage of medication that patients bring from home when they are admitted to the hospital. Terry and her team even organized a safe method for members of the community to dispose of their outdated medications.
Parking was another issue that Terry needed to address. Parking on the UNC Chapel Hill campus is limited and previously saddled visitors with large parking bills.
She and her leaders worked with the university transportation department to share some of the costs and decrease the amount of parking fees visitors had to pay. They located a commuter parking lot and developed a longterm patient parking initiative that included a shuttle service to and from the parking area. This new parking initiative reduced the price of parking for these particular visitors from $12 per day to $10 per week.
Needless to say, visitors are much happier now that their parking bill has been reduced by nearly 90 percent.
But it’s not just visitors, patients, clinicians and administrators who are happy with Terry’s efforts. So are her officers.
Her department participated in a workplace engagement (workplace satisfaction) survey and found that officer scores went up from Tier II to Tier I (top tier), which is difficult to achieve. This improvement is most likely due to Terry taking her leadership team on a day-long team-building experience, as well as personally meeting and engaging with every employee in her large department.
Despite all of these accomplishments, Terry remains humble. She still frequently attends industry conferences and comes back with pages and pages of notes on ways she can improve hospital security. She knows that the field of healthcare security and safety is constantly evolving and encourages her peers to keep learning. “Don’t ever think you know it all,” she says.
