Stanton hospital staff pleased with beefed-up security

The union representative for Stanton Territorial Hospital workerssays staff are pleased that security guards capable of physically restraining a violent patient are now on the job.

Sheila Laity says workers are happy with theincreased presence of security staff, as well as the ability of hospitalstaff to interact with the security personnel.

The guardsare employees of Twilite Security, the same company that currently handlessecurity at the hospital, but they have more experience and training in physical intervention.

This is in response to hospital staff calling for a change to security after recentincidents where patients became violent.

Brenda FitzGerald, CEO of the Stanton Territorial Health Authority, says at least one security officer who is trainedto physically intervene with a violent patient will be on site 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

"In addition now, we'll have the person with an even higher level of physical training that will be able to respond to the code white," she said.

"And that will be there as a resource until all our security personnel have received a higher level of physical training."

She said thesecurity guards will follow the direction of hospital clinicians. FitzGeraldalso says the hospital will also give more training to in-house security staff on working within a hospital environment.