TULSA, Okla. — Following the fateful day at Saint Francis on June 1, 2022, the building’s security was one of the first things to be looked at by leaders there.
The security director for Saint Francis, Julie Harris, has spent her career in law enforcement.
"Some days you sit and contemplate when you have nothing else to think about. And you think about that day, and you think about all the lives that were impacted,” Harris said, “But most of the time, I'm just here to do my job."
Harris spent nearly four decades in law enforcement, serving various roles within the Tulsa Police Department.
Five years ago, she joined Saint Francis as the security director, a job that opened her eyes.
"As a law enforcement officer, you expect people to not like you, you expect people to talk ugly to you. You expect them to possibly fight you,” Harris said. “But coming to a healthcare facility. I did not expect that these men and women are not treated with dignity and respect that I would expect."
On June 1, 2022, it all became real.
"I spent 33 years on the Tulsa police department. I was there on a lot of critical incidents,” Harris said.
But this was close to home.
"This incident is on my mind every single day because I have officers present in the building that were there that day,” Harris said. “I've became very close to a lot of the employees that were in the Natalie building and we stay in touch."
The shooting at the Natalie building one year ago made her step back and reevaluate security measures.
But she is doing so to keep the hospital a place of healing.
"We want it to still be an area of caring and calm,” Harris said. “But we also need people to know we're also going to be watching you."
Security does that in various ways.
Harris said everyone at the hospital has to check in and have a legitimate purpose for being there.
"So, we still want the openness and the calming and the caring, but we're tightening things down,” Harris said. “By not letting everybody walked through anymore and go just shopping in the gift shop or walking down to the cafeteria and having a meal."
Harris said that is just the way healthcare has become.
"Before I got here five years ago, it had just started the rippling effect,” Harris said. “But now, healthcare systems across the country you're seeing more and more people show up for not for no-good reason."
The hospital system has always had security measures in place, but now it is more amplified, starting with being more proactive.
"If I get a call or an email, and sometimes these are email threats that people get if we get an email threat or verbal or physical or somebody's had an awful time with their physician or even if they talk to the housekeeper and housekeeper reports to us. We're getting on the front end of it and we're contacting them immediately,” Harris said.
The goal is to be proactive instead of reactive, according to Harris.
The hospital system is also testing body cameras on its guards.
"We're field testing them and then, so this is a little bit different than working in with the police department because we have HIPAA laws we have to follow,” Harris said. “So we have to be very careful. There's limited access to who can view these videos, and the storage of them. The company that sells them to us has no access whatsoever."
Those 90 guards, covering the entire Saint Francis system, have what Harris calls a deterrent right there on their bodies.
The security team also has a mass text alert system to send information to those inside the buildings in an emergency.
Security changes, Harris hopes, will look similar to patients, but is something seen by the staff knowing her team is there for them.
"I think that you know, the measures that we have taken, although I never felt unsafe coming into a shift in the emergency department, I think I've I know now I have constant reminders that somebody's looking out for me somebody's watching so that that has changed," Dr. Ryan Parker, associate chief medical officer for the Yale campus, said.
Parker said there is also a renewed push to go through training.
"We had it available for people we required training before, but I think it made people want to do it if that makes sense,” Parker said. “The de-escalation training, you kind of saw how important it was to be able to help somebody who was in crisis and kind of walk them down from strong emotions."
Stay in touch with us anytime, anywhere --
- Download our free app for Apple, Android and Kindle devices.
- Sign up for daily newsletters emailed to you
- Like us on Facebook
- Follow us on Instagram
- Follow us on Twitter
