SECURITY SPOTLIGHT
Get to know the staff who keep us safe
Durrell Hicks, a UF Health Shands Security officer, remembers being a 19-year-old rookie correctional officer, looking up at a large incarcerated man with several inches and years on him. Hicks doesn’t remember what he was asking the man to do, but he does remember being intimidated.
“I was a young guy telling an older guy what to do,” he said.
Hicks had been working at a Piggly Wiggly grocery store and studying criminology when he was offered a position at Lancaster Correctional Institution in Trenton. In the prison system, kindness was looked at as weakness. “You can come in tough and lighten up, but you can’t come in soft and get tougher,” his boss would say. Hicks learned to be tough, despite being kind by nature.
Thirty-one years later, and after a year of retirement, Hicks joined UF Health Shands Security in 2017. He said he loves it and would never return to corrections. Kindness and hospitality are required on the job, and that’s a change he’s welcomed. He works overnight in the UF Health Shands Cancer Hospital and enjoys interacting with everyone who enters the building.
DID YOU KNOW?
UF Health Shands Security is a phone call away.
Call 352-265-0911 for urgent requests. For nonurgent or routine requests, call 352-265-0111.
For more, visit Bridge.UFHealth.org/Shands- Facilities and select “Safety, Security and External Transportation” under the “About” tab.
Cory Hunte is the UF Health Shands Security officer who switches off with Hicks to work the day shift. He had a similar role at New York Presbyterian Hospital before joining UF Health Shands. He also prefers his new job here in Gainesville.
“The weather is great,” Hunte said. “There’s no snow and, generally, the people here are much nicer.”
Hunte has also been here since 2017 and said his transition was seamless. He has always appreciated the patient care environment.
“We want to make sure everyone who comes through our hospitals is safe and has the best experience we can give them,” Hunte said. “My favorite part of working here is helping people. That’s the highlight of our job.”
The most difficult cases for our Security teams involve patients with medical conditions affecting their behavior or people suffering from addiction. They often have to help staff by restraining patients who have become noncompliant and aggressive. The security team’s strength is their training and skill in de-escalating tense situations through careful verbal intervention.
Hicks said that in disruptive situations and difficult patient care scenarios, each person is “a soul that needs to be tended to, like anybody.”
Hunte agrees, describing their team as “mediators” who regularly meet hostility and the threat of violence with understanding.
He added, “(Patients who act out are) not really mad at you. They don’t know you. They’re mad at the situation, and you can’t take it personally.”
In stressful situations, Hicks draws inspiration from his pastor. A saying that he reflects on is, “It doesn’t matter how people treat you, but it does matter how you react.”
DID YOU KNOW?
Our Security team works with internal customers to prevent and de-escalate conflict. They use nonphysical intervention whenever possible. In a future edition of News+Notes, we will share more about their de-escalation and “mental first aid” tactics.