Protect yourself with effective security

Hospitals have always been responsible for providing a "reasonably safe environment" for patients, visitors and staff. There are moral, legal, practical and profitability motives underlying this attitude. However, this responsibility has been reinforced by the increasing number of legal actions being brought against hospitals for breach of their duty. Hospitals are under pressure to increase existing security budgets to address the volume of complaints. The purpose of this article is to identify problems in existing hospital security systems and propose some potential solutions. Security has been defined as a "system of safeguards designed to protect the physical property of the facility and to achieve a relative ... (reduction in the probability of detrimental incidents) ... for all persons interacting within the organization and its environment". The goal of hospital security services is to reduce the institution's various vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities have been divided into two major categories, personal safety and loss prevention.