October 14 – 20 is Healthcare Security and Safety Week and here at Hillcrest Medical Center, we’d like to recognize our security and safety team for all of their hard work and for keeping us safe on a daily basis. Jesse Millan, our Safety and Security Director shared with us how he became the Safety and Security director as well as several things that go into safety and security that you may not be aware of.
Jesse first thought about getting into security “back in the day”, where he describes seeing a security officer sitting in a car, reading a newspaper. Looking out the window from his ‘back-breaking’ materials management job, he thought, “I could do that!” What he didn’t know at the time was how much goes into safety and security behind the scenes. It turned out, Jesse would not be sitting in his car all day catching up on the weekly news. But 29 years later, he keeps repeating, “I just love my job. Helping people is why I wake up every single day.”
“I’ve had great mentors along the way, and just happened to be in the right places at the right times. I started working at Tulsa Regional in 1989 and transferred here to Hillcrest in July of 2000. I’ve been running the department for at least 15 years,” he shares. Jesse details that day-to-day, he and his team “provide a safe environment at all times by putting processes, policies and training to work. I make sure my team is well-prepared for the challenges that we encounter every single day at this facility.”
Problem solving is something that Jesse really enjoys in this position. “There are so many people that call me every single day with difficult situations and there isn’t anything that I haven’t been able to resolve. Be nice to people, listen to them, trouble shoot.” Jesse and his team have put many processes and policies into place at Hillcrest Medical Center, including many safety drills and preparations for emergency situations.
Jesse credits his team of 35 with keeping Hillcrest safe and secure, and he notes, “My team members are the worker bees that make me shine! I feel like I am nobody without them.”
Bobby Benn, Hillcrest Medical Center’s Safety Manager shares that his role keeps him on his toes, adding “It’s a new adventure every day. There is always something new going on here at the hospital.” Bobby adds that the most challenging aspect of working in safety and security is “We have to enforce regulations and sometimes people don’t want to follow those regulations; your job is to make sure that happens.”
Bobby concludes, “Safety is not a department at Hillcrest, it’s an attitude. Safety is everybody’s responsibility and we take that seriously, every day.”