Introduction

My name is Derek but over the radio I'm known as 29. I work the grave shift for a security company at a level 1 trauma center hospital since July 09. Starting out I thought I was going to need to become a big mean person, but so far it's almost the opposite. The Majority of my time spent at the main hospital campus (there are 3 campus' that our company works at), is spent in a back locked down hallway of the Emergency Room known as the "West Hall".

The West Hall consists of 4 hospital rooms with magnetically lockable doors, cameras, and microphones. Two of which are regular looking hospital rooms: Counters, equipment, televisions, etc. The other two are plain white rooms with a gurney in it which are strapped down to the floor. There is a locked cabinet on the wall that we can open if we do need to put medical equipment in the room for such an emergency. This hallway is locked down on both ends of the hall. There is a giant magnet that holds the door shut and you'll break your foot before you break the door open.

The primary function of my job is to ensure safety for the patients, visitors, and staff, but we as security guards do so much more. We're not just gorillas that over abuse powers just because we have a badge. We are also Registered Nursing Assistants and help out a lot. What it is that I do in the West Hall is what we call "Close Observation". There's a significant amount of people that come in for Suicidal Ideation, Suicidal Attempts, Combative, Intoxicated (either on illegal or legal substances), and those who need a Mental Health Evaluation which ranges from manic depression to dementia, schizophrenia, mental delays etc. We have special codes we use to determine a patient's status as to their stay but for security reasons I'll just say them in their General Form.

A lot of these people come in on the worst day of their lives and the last thing they need is someone to boss them around. We do our best as security guards and as people to comfort our patients and make sure they are feeling safe while they are in our care. We make sure if they are warm enough and give them warm blankets (we have these blanket warmers that are like little ovens that warm the blankets up to like 120 degrees F), we make sure that they have enough food and water (depending on if the nurse OKs it. You never know what they are there for initially and food and water could only make things worse for them medically.), and I'll also talk with the patients about things. Either the situation that brought them there or just general conversations. This is probably one of the best tools we have for keeping patients calm in my opinion. A lot of people that come in for Suicidal Ideation or Suicidal Attempts just need someone to listen to them and care about what's going on in their life. There are a lot of sad people in my town (just in my town alone, I can only imagine the rest of the world.), and they just need someone to talk to and care for them. It's really that simple. So being kind to someone in public will literally be the best thing to happen them all day, week, month, year or even longer. It's never too early to be kind because it could sometimes be too late. I'll talk later about my involvement with patients and situations I've dealt with.

Some other things we do as a part of safety for patients are restraints, this can be the best part of the night or the worst part of the night depending on how it goes. This is when a patient becomes combative to others or at risk of self harm. Depending on how cooperative or uncooperative this can take 2-6+ people to get someone safely restrained. Our goal is not to use restraints as a punishment and to get them out of restraints as soon as possible. But this will all depend on the behavior and actions of the patient. We do remove each restraint every two hours and exercise their limb so it does not grow tiresome, and then it'll either be placed back in restraint or not. Depending again on the patient.

Another task we have to do is help bag bodies / move bodies to the morgue. At first this sounds terrible, but it's usually not so bad. About 95% of the time the bodies are already bagged when we get there to pick them up. Sometimes though they are short staffed and need help. So that's one service we provide. Another time that we may have to bag them is if the body bags rip open. It's pretty terrible when it does. By the time we go to pick the body up, it's usually already been there for at least an hour or so. Enough time for the body to start it's decomposing. Usually in the form of bowel movement. So when a bag rips open at this time the first thing you see is a body floating around in itself. *shudders*. The grotesqueness of it all isn't as bad as the smell though. But that's death, just so much as it is a part of life. I have some interesting stories to tell later about bagging bodies I'll tell later.

Another cool thing we get to do is help out with the Helicopter Airlifts. When a patient suffers from a major injury usually dealing with a head or neck injury they will needed to be airlifted to a level 3 trauma center. And my job for this is to help unload equipment from the helicopter and escort the airlift team down to the ER from the roof to the ER via elevator that we switch off for public use, which would normally go from the parking garage to the ER lobby, and we also help escort the airlift team from the ER with the patient up to the Helipad and load them back on. It's very cool to be able to help out with something like this, and the helicopters they use are very fast. The hospital they transfer to is about an hour and a half by car with little to no traffic, with the helicopter it takes them 5-7 minutes!
That's pretty much the generalization of the job we perform at the main campus. We also make rounds of the hospital to make sure everything is staying calm. We'll run odd jobs for nurses such as delivering things to different departments.

I am also specially trained to work the PBX switchboard (which is the hospital Operator for all 3 campuses), not all the guards are able to do this, so it's kinda cool that they have me do it. During the grave shift I play operator 3 times a night to give the regular operator a lunch break and regular breaks. It's not as busy as the day so it's not so bad. A lot of the calls are the nurses asking for the hospitalist to be paged to their floor or to page the nursing supervisor. Not many people call between 12am and 5am to talk to visitors.

Another campus I work at time to time is the Birthing Unit in a different city. It's part of the same hospital just a bit smaller. Only about 40 patient rooms as to opposed to the 200+ rooms at the main campus. And the ER is about half the size, where a lot of patients would be transfered to the main campus and we do about 95% less patient watches. Our main purpose at the birthing unit is to protect the patients and the babies. We do this by using RFID transmitter bracelets that we place on the infants ankles, and if this is forcefully removed alarms go off throughout the floor telling us which baby it came off and what room they are in and we'll go running to make sure no one is trying to steal a baby! We also have readers along the walls so if an infant gets near a door the alarms go off as well. And the wing where the patients stay are locked down. There is no going in or out unless you pick up a phone and ring the front desk to be let out. And every visitor that goes in signs in with a picture ID shown to gain entrance, and we buzz them in to the wing. It's a very secure locked down area. Annnnnnnd I get to take pictures of cute babies for most of the night ^_^ .. *cough* for documentation and security purposes of course, so we know babies won't get switched up. This shift I consider my vacation and relaxing shift because I don't really worry so much about patients wanting to kill me or stalk my family and kill them in their sleep. Which I will also talk about in a later post. But for now I think this is a good introduction as to what I do as a Security Guard in a Hospital.