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’Don’t Hold The Door’: Boston hospital uses multimedia to reinforce safety

Hospital Safety Insider, June 29, 2017

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Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) in Boston is well-acquainted with the dangers an unauthorized person can pose when granted access to restricted areas. The facility suffered unflattering headlines earlier this year when the public learned that 42-year-old Cheryl Wang had bluffed her way into five ORs and other patient care areas late last year by posing as a doctor-in-training, despite having been dismissed from her surgical residency program.

Wang’s case—which brought an unsettling reminder of the 2015 security lapse that enabled a disgruntled man to corner and kill a BWH doctor in an exam room—drew attention to an extremely common security vulnerability known as “tailgating” or “piggybacking.” When walking through a doorway, it’s common courtesy to hold the door for whoever is behind you. That’s a problem, however, if the person behind you doesn’t have permission to go where you’re going.

To reinforce the lesson that every hospital employee has a responsibility to help keep unauthorized people out of restricted areas, BWH produced instructional videos that depict disturbingly mundane security lapses. The two dramatizations, titled “Be Aware” and “Don’t Hold The Door,” will be shown to all 18,000 of BWH’s employees.

“We intended for the videos to be provocative, to invoke a strong reaction, so that they would be memorable,” said Erin McDonough, BWH’s chief communication officer, in a statement. ... 

(Read the full free story and watch the videos on HCPro's OSHA Healthcare Advisor blog.)

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