The results from this year’s salary survey have been tabulated, and for novice hospital nonsworn public safety officers, pay rates have mostly increased since 2011. Whereas only 32 percent made more than $25,000 per year four years ago,
now more than half (51 percent) make that amount.
For sworn officers, it’s a mixed bag. More who are just starting out at hospitals now make greater than $30,000 per year, but fewer have an annual salary of more than $40,000 than they did in 2011 when CS conducted its previous survey on hospital salaries.
Staffing levels continue to pose a significant challenge to public safety departments, although not as much as they did four years ago. Still, nearly two-thirds of respondents say they don’t have enough nonsworn security/ public safety officers and other department staff, while more than three in four respondents say they don’t have enough sworn police/public safety officers.
The biggest change from four years ago is the increased use of weapons, especially less-lethal ones. The percentage of hospital officers who are armed with some type of weapon increased from 48 percent in 2011 to 65 percent this year. The biggest increase was in the percentage of hospitals that arm their officers with less-lethal weapons (from 23 percent to 36 percent). Coinciding with this increase is a seven percent rise in concerns about less-lethal weapons.
Concerns about having enough video surveillance equipment or the equipment being obsolete increased six percentage points from 18 percent in 2011 to 24 percent this year.
On the bright side, concerns about Joint Commission compliance have gone down six points to 14 percent; emergency preparedness by six points to 28 percent; officer safety by six points to 17 percent; slow decision making by six points to 12
percent and infant abduction prevention by ten points to 9 percent.
Other topics covered in the study include officer incentives, bed-to-officer ratios, chief/director pay, gender diversity, racial/ethnic diversity, time in the hospital security profession and job satisfaction.
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