Nurse Call – Updated for Today

In step with the march of modern technology inn many areas of today’s civilization (commerce, industry, health and medicine, entertainment and others), there is also a rise in the development of old systems. One of these is the important and critical nurse call.

There are many innovations now in the upgrades. These would include streamline communications methods, the integration of the clinical workforce, the many innovative uses of today’s technology, and their accompanying systems. (Some have RLRTS or real-time location systems for better workflow.)

These are used mainly to counter the exponential increase in the number of patients. The main aim in alerting the nurses on-duty is to make the responses among the care-giving professionals (mostly nurses) more timely and fast, while carrying more quality than before.

Benefits

Like most of the new systems, the primary benefits a patient can get are the immediacy of communications between nurses and patients. For instance, the system provides the patients confined to their beds the ability to alert the medical staff (most especially their attending nurse) of an immediate medical (or emergency) situation.

With the call alert, the nurses are informed that the patient might have an immediate need of important attention, medical or otherwise. The assistance can take on different forms. There could be a physical need for assistance (getting up, for example) or the patient’s other physical needs triggered by some symptoms and conditions (pain, feeling of cold or heat, etc.)

Paging

Different hospitals have different systems in paging their nurses. However, the systems are basically similar in principle. They only differ in the versions or types of technologies used their procedural techniques, and other integrated actions as provided by their software.

For instance, one system has the patient initiating a call via a call station button. The patient’s information and other pertinent data are displayed on the monitor.

Data

The info might include time and date, room number, type of call (emergency, bed, etc) and is immediately sent to the assigned nurse where the same info is presented.

Some systems have additional actions to consider, like levels of escalation that depends on the urgency and the type of medical requirements of the patient. Some have features like repeats on the notices on unanswered alerts.

Once a response is received, this will not be put on display at the monitor.  (In addition, for hospital use, the notices are recorded and stored for review, analysis and other future actions.)

Other features

Some systems use wireless pendants in the nurse call. Some come in belt clips, neck pendants, or sometimes as wrist bands. All need to be in constant surveillance and supervision, however, because most units are battery-operated and are in danger of unit power failure.

The signals are sent on multiple frequencies to ensure reliability and connection to the called party. The present systems in use are usually not dependent on any particular operating systems. They might be browser-based for accessibility at any computer. 

The other nurse call systems have nurses stations and offsite computers provide visual notices. Some systems have large wall pagers that display the4 notifications all over the facility (hospital).