St Mary’s Hospital security officer Charlie Brett has been presented with a prestigious ACS Pacesetters ‘Officer of Distinction 2022’ award.
Charlie is a Security Officer at St Mary’s – for whom APCOA provides security and car parking management.
The award was 1 of 12 presented by ACS Pacesetters this year from a field of more than 100 nominations and was in recognition of Charlie’s professionalism, caring and dedication to his duty in his handling of a difficult incident with a disruptive child patient.
Whilst on duty, Charlie was called to the children’s ward of the hospital to assist with a patient who had already been behaving erratically earlier in the day and whose actions had escalated into aggression.
On arrival Charlie was informed that the child’s relative was with the patient and following his own dynamic risk assessment, he entered the room whereupon the child removed his shoe and threw it at Charlie, striking him in the head.
Calmly continuing a verbal de-escalation, he managed to open a dialogue with both the patient and his family member and maintain it throughout erratic peaks and troughs of mood, one of which resulted in the patient kicking his relative squarely in the face. Whilst the relative received medical treatment, Charlie assessed that it would not be safe for other hospital staff, patients or visitors if the child left the room, but that continuity would also be important in the care of this particular young person, so he decided that he would stay with the patient for as long as necessary.
The incident continued for over 2 hours during which time the child continued to assault Charlie and members of staff and was, on occasion, therapeutically supported by Charlie using appropriate techniques.
Kim Challis, Regional Managing Director, APCOA UK & Ireland says:
“We are all extremely proud of Charlie. His professional, caring and unselfish actions undoubtedly minimised the impact of this upsetting incident on other hospital users and helped our client to deal with a volatile young patient both sympathetically and decisively’.
Rob Jubb, Security manager at St Mary’s Hospital Isle of Wight comments:
“Charlie is a real credit to our hospital and it’s fantastic to see him recognised with this respected award from ACS Pacesetters.’
Congratulations Charlie in getting your reward the jobs not easy sometimes and you’ve proved invaluable to the hospital colleagues and your company you work for , well done hun
Well done Charlie, I would have given him a slap.
Well done mate, through current experience security is more often than not a thankless job at the best of times, but it’s nice to see some recognition. Keep up the good work!
Has St Mary’s become a night club, why security!
What a dreadful child, I expect some hand wringing do gooder would support this demon child, I don’t care what kind of problems this thing has, they know what’s right & wrong & kicking a relative in the face is not acceptable! We can all guess the future for him & it will be incarceration.