Understanding Security Risks

3 Tips For Increasing Visitor Security At Your Hospital

4 March 2018

Javier Webb

Having protocol set up for visitors to your hospital is essential for security, especially in high-risk areas such as the emergency room and the intensive care unit. You cannot just have people wandering around that you don't know who you are. To keep your hospital safe, you need to make sure that you have a plan for visitor security.

Have Established Visitor Hours

The first thing that you need to do is have established visitor hours. Having established visitor hours will help established the hours of time during which extra people, outside of hospital personnel, will be in certain areas of your hospital. This will increase vigilance and awareness on behalf of your security staff to question individuals in areas of your hospital outside of visitor hours.

Have Clear Visitor Sign-In & Check-Points

Second, you need to have a clear visitor sign-in. You are going to want to have established check-points that everyone needs to go through in order to enter certain areas of your hospital. Hospital staff and vendors can ease through these areas with their badges. For all other individuals, they will have to sign-in and get a visitor badge to go past the checkpoints.

All hospital staff employees will know that everyone who passed the checkpoints should have either a staff badge, a vendor badge, or a visitor badge. Anyone who doesn't have a badge can easily be identified and pointed out to hospital security, who can safely approach the individual in question. Your hospital security can help them get a visitor's badge or escort them out of the controlled areas within your hospital.

A badge system with clear points-of-entry will make it easier for the hospital staff to identify who doesn't have permission to be in a certain area and act appropriately.

Have a Protocol in Place for Approaching Individuals Without a Pass

Finally, you need to make sure that you train hospital staff as well as your hospital security officers on how to approach individuals who don't have a visitor, staff or vendor badge.

You don't want hospital staff and security staff to approach every individual without a badge as if they are a potential hostile security threat. At the same time, you also don't want to let your guard down.

Establish a clear protocol for how your hospital staff and your hospital security guards should approach and have conversations with unidentified visitors. Be sure to go through training with all of your hospital security and staff so that everyone is on the same page with the protocol.

Increase visitor security at your hospital by setting up established visitor hours, badges and checkpoints. Train hospital staff as well as security personnel on how to respond to individuals without badges. Make sure that your approach is first about deescalating conflict and peaceful resolutions to the situation. For more information, go to websites like this one.

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