Question

Maybridge Hospital

You are the Director of Security of a large metropolitan hospital. Ann Myers, the Director of the Psychiatric Ward recently contacted you regarding a problem with some critically ill psychiatric patients. Apparently, some of these patients have been able to leave the area unattended without permission. On more than one occasion, these unattended patients had caused problems in other areas of the hospital. Ann said that the problem seemed to be with the security measures for the entrance door to the unit, but so far the problem was something of a mystery, and nobody knew what was causing the breakdown in controls. On a tour of the site you note that there are two doors. The outer door lets you into the unit. The inner security door lets you into the high security area. Both doors are card key controlled.

You are informed that all patients who had left the unit without permission are from the high security area and had gotten out around meal time. Meals are brought in on food carts from the kitchen. All patients eat in the dining area.   Ann feels there is a problem with the food service procedures.

You decide to investigate this situation. What would you do?

Answer 1

Answer

he problem has the identified that during the food servicing time, the patients have been found escaping. Hence to arrest this problem of patients escaping from the high security area, the food servicing procedure must be changed. A new method needs to be adopted to bring the food to the dining room, or the location of the dining room must be changed.

It is during the movement of food carts from the kitchen to the dining room, the security breach is happening. The solution to this problem is that the food cart movement must not be allowed crossing the security area, to reach the dining room. For this to happen, a separate exit to place from the dining room for the movement of food cart alone. Since the dining room is at the right bottom as shown in the figure, a separate exit door is provided to its right corner from where the food carts movement could take place. The food carts needs not enter through the normal exit door.

Once the food is place in the dining room, the separate exit door is closed and the patients could have the food in the dining room.