According to a recent American Hospital Association e-book, healthcare workers are five times more likely to experience violence in the workplace than those in other industries. Addressing this extends beyond the daily operations of healthcare facilities, and into to the construction and expansion phases, which can include architects shaping designs with security in mind and construction project managers implementing safety protocols.

In Episode 9 of Constructing with Care, DPR’s podcast focusing on healthcare construction, Deb Sheehan, healthcare market strategy leader at DPR, and Jay Farhat, executive director of protective services at Baptist Health, discuss the types of security measures to preventing crime, like security screenings and video monitoring, to the new technologies and innovations that improve safety, to training and recruitment of safety personnel on healthcare campuses. From the construction perspective, they discuss specific security measures that can be implemented into the environmental and building design, and tactics that protect the most vulnerable patients like children.

In Episode 10, Sheehan and Farhat discuss taking a team approach into de-escalation tactics, particularly in behavioral health facilities that are often underequipped and lack resources. This also includes healthcare facilities creating robust violence prevention policies that help define the level of potential threats and educating staff on the correct level of escalation. They discuss what technologies are to come, like artificial intelligence, and how the security of healthcare campuses continues to evolve.

Listen to Episode 9 and 10 on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Spotify.

Read the whitepaper this episode follows How to Build a Safer, Healing-centric Environment. You can read all articles in the Healthcare Insight series and listen to past episodes of Constructing with Care available here.

In our next episode, Shehan and Farhat continue their conversation, discussing behavioral health departments, the importance of AI and autonomous devices, and the pivotal role of capital projects shaping safer environments.

Subscribe for future episodes to hear conversations with inspiring guests from across the healthcare and construction industry about how considerations in healthcare design and construction can create better clinical workflow, enhance patient experience, improve efficiency, and more.

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