Dec 23
2024
Three Key Ingredients to An Effective Staff Duress Solution
By Jeff Stiffler, head of product, Cognosos.
Healthcare professionals dedicate their lives to caring for others, and while encountering traumatic events is an unfortunate part of their job, physical or verbal assault is unacceptable and should never be tolerated.
Nevertheless, healthcare workers are under the constant threat of violence, a disturbing trend that continues to plague our healthcare systems. Workplace violence has become so endemic that 40% of healthcare employees have experienced such acts in the last two years, according to a 2023 Premier’s survey.
Although some strategies have shown promise, a truly effective approach should incorporate three key elements:
- A discreet means of alerting security
- Accurate location tracking, indoors and outdoors
- Unhindered communication with the necessary personnel
A Discreet Means of Alerting Security
Traditional wall-mounted panic buttons, often located at the head of a patient’s bed or in other fixed positions, can pose challenges. Their stationary nature limits accessibility, particularly during escalating incidents with patients or visitors. Moreover, the act of reaching for and pressing these buttons can further escalate tensions, contrary to the intended purpose of a duress solution.
To help address the issue, RTLS platforms started offering wearable badges that allowed staff to signal for help during escalating situations. However, early models often lacked the desired level of discretion, potentially alerting aggressors to the staff member’s call for assistance. Manufacturers then developed discrete personal staff buttons designed to be easily concealed, enabling staff to signal for help without drawing attention to themselves. To alleviate anxiety and uncertainty, some safety solutions incorporate a haptic response feature. This silent alert, triggered after activating the panic button, confirms that a duress call was sent, providing the distressed staff member peace of mind.
Accurate Location Tracking, Indoors and Outdoors
Time is of the essence when a staff member activates a duress badge. These incidents can unfold rapidly and unpredictably, potentially moving across different areas of the hospital or even spilling into the parking lot or garage. Therefore, a robust solution is required to accurately locate, both indoors and outdoors.
Unfortunately, legacy RTLS solutions often struggle with outdoor operation due to their reliance on heavy infrastructure, making installations costly or infeasible. Additionally, they leverage technology that doesn’t provide the needed accuracy. For example, cellular technology is great at providing GPS coordinates; however, it struggles with accurate altitude measurements in multi-story buildings, returning someone’s GPS coordinates but failing to determine which floor they are on.
AI-based location intelligence overcomes these challenges, resulting in a highly accurate system that provides real-time location intelligence within a facility or outdoors. Unlike traditional RTLS platforms, AI-enabled staff duress solutions use ultralight infrastructure, which makes them easy and inexpensive to install across an entire campus, inside and outdoors.
Unhindered Communication with the Necessary Personnel
Every second counts during workplace violence events. Communication between staff under duress and security must be fast and reliable. However, due to the crowded nature of hospital network environments, many legacy RTLS solutions cannot always guarantee streamlined communications. This unreliability arises when a hospital’s Wi-Fi network is congested with other communication traffic, preventing a wearable duress badge’s signal from reaching security teams quickly.
Staff duress solutions need a low-latency pathway that prioritizes safety signals, thereby avoiding delays and bottlenecks on the hospital Wi-Fi network. Best-in-class low-latency features are custom-built for the chaotic nature of hospital network environments, expediting the dissemination of emergency alerts and critical information to security teams and other relevant personnel. By enhancing communication speeds through a dedicated alert pathway, hospitals can accelerate response times, resolve incidents more quickly and minimize harm to staff and patients.
In addition to greater reliability and speed, staff duress communication channels must integrate with other security platforms to help facilitate a more coordinated response to workplace violence. Luckily, some of the latest RTLS solutions can seamlessly integrate with existing code, security and communication systems, allowing hospitals to improve their response and processes over time.
Safer Staff Means Better Patient Care
While completely preventing workplace violence remains an aspiration, cutting-edge staff duress solutions integrate the three essential elements, maximizing the safety of healthcare workers and minimizing their anxiety and stress. This assurance gives doctors, nurses and other medical staff greater confidence, empowering them to focus on their work, ultimately contributing to better quality of care for patients.
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