Violence in healthcare facilities can have serious negative impacts on patients, staff, and the facility itself. Patients may experience physical harm or psychological trauma, staff may experience physical harm or emotional distress, and the facility may suffer damage to its infrastructure or reputation. Additionally, violence can lead to increased health care costs, decreased staff morale, and difficulty recruiting and retaining staff. It is important for healthcare facilities to have in addition to policies and procedures in place, digital solutions to prevent and respond to incidents of violence, and to provide support for those affected by it.
Although the statistics are not exhaustive, as it is based on self-reporting only, the violence in hospitals that has been surveyed concerns mainly psychiatry, emergency and geriatric services.
According to MEDPAGE TODAY, during a 3-month period last year year (2022) , 57 nurses were assaulted on average each day!
This violence generates many negative impacts:
The impact of this violence on the healthcare staff was described as follows:
Solutions exist to improve care givers safety and reassure them, by allowing the assaulted person to warn colleagues and not to remain alone in the face of the aggression. Indeed, the purpose of these solutions is to alert in an efficient manner, the authorities or security personnel of an event that requires rapid action. It ensures the safety of patients and medical staff and can be seen as mandatory in any healthcare setting.
The geolocalized duress system can help to prevent aggression in hospitals by providing real-time tracking of staff and patients and allowing them to quickly and discreetly alert security in case of an emergency. The system can use RTLS to pinpoint the exact location of an incident, which can help security respond more quickly and effectively. Additionally, the system can be integrated with other surveillance technologies to provide a more comprehensive view of the hospital environment.
The staff and patients who are equipped with the system’s device, such as a smartphone, a wrisband or a tag with a panic button, can trigger an alarm in case of an emergency by pressing the button. This will send an alert to the security and the alarm will be activated with the location of the person who triggered the alarm. This allows security to quickly locate and respond to the incident.
The system can also be used to monitor and restrict access to certain areas of the hospital, such as psychiatric units or emergency rooms, to prevent aggressive incidents from occurring. Overall, a geolocalized duress system can help hospitals to create a safer environment for staff, patients, and visitors by increasing security, reducing response times to incidents, and providing greater visibility into potential threats.
Pole Star designed and developped advanced RTLS (real-time locating system) that provide reliable and accurate location insights of medical and bio medical assets and medical staff. Pole Star solution (the NAO Suite) is a system that can be integrated and/or interfaced with other third-party systems such as Medical IoT platforms, Hospital Information Systems (HIS), Duress system, patient flow monitoring, Asset Management Systems, etc.. This allows for seamless communication and data sharing between the systems, enabling more efficient and effective management of healthcare facilities. The integration and interfacing of Pole Star solutions with other systems can improve patient care, staff efficiency and facility management. The integration of these systems can also provide real-time monitoring of patients, equipment and facilities and can help to improve patient outcomes and reduce costs.
Contact Pole Star team to discuss how PoleStar solutions can be used to fulfill your RTLS needs.