Nurse Call As A Safety Solution
In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, hospitals and other health care facilities are being forced to reevaluate their IT protocols in order to ensure the safety of patients, visitors and staff. According to the University of Washington Medicine, several critical steps should be taken in healthcare IT departments to reduce the spread of infectious diseases, particularly Covid-19.
Health Care IT Department Protocols
One of the most important initial steps in adjusting communication protocols in the midst of Covid-19 is to thoroughly assess currently implemented protocols. Once any gaps in the system have been identified, the IT department can work to strategically address these gaps without having to create a whole new procedure in the process.
All communication tools should be updated as soon as possible with the latest technology available, and the possibility of telehealth and remote work should be explored to determine feasibility within the facility. In addition, tech support should be enhanced to allow for the expected increase in work-related technology use, and tech systems should be enhanced to allow for the resulting heavy user traffic.
Rauland Responder Nurse Call Technology
As part of this heightened information technology protocol, existing technologies such as the Rauland Responder system, are becoming an increasingly popular non-contact method of communicating with patients. Unlike traditional close-contact communication where nurses and other medical personnel have to do PPE each time they enter the patient’s room, the nurse call system allows medical personnel to attend to every non-urgent patient need without utilizing precious personal protective equipment.
To use the nurse call system, patients simply push a button and are able to verbally communicate with their nurse from the safety of the nurse’s station. Not only does this technology drastically reduce the amount of PPE used, it also reduces close-contact encounters between nurses and infected patients thereby reducing the likelihood of medical personnel contracting the illness. Medical personnel can also use the technology to effectively mark patient isolation status, alert other medical personnel of the potentially-infected patient and quickly call for the patient to be transported to the proper isolation ward and housekeeping to disinfect the contaminated area. By connecting the nurse call technology to existing EMR systems, medical facilities are able to keep track of everyone who has been in contact with a potentially infected patient and quickly isolate these individuals from others within the hospital.
In the age of Covid-19, temporary pop-up hospitals are becoming increasingly common and long-term care facilities can quickly become deadly breeding grounds for the virus. The addition of this nurse call technology in these two types of facilities could be the difference between life and death for patients and medical personnel in these environments.
For more information about nurse call, contact us to learn more.
Citations:
Drees, Jackie. “UW Medicine: Top 10 things hospital IT departments can do in response to COVID-19.” ASC Communications, 21 Apr. 2020.
Glick, Nancy, MD and Michael Slater, MD. “Nursing Call IntegrationHighly Infectious Pathogens in the Hospital Setting.” Rauland, 2020.