How Wireless Nurse Call Systems Work

Wireless nurse call systems operate the exact same way. Patients or residents can wear the nurse call button around their necks or however they like. They don’t have to make it to pull cords across the room and they won’t find themselves stuck or abandoned unable to make a needed call.

This also helps your nurses have some more freedom to move around and do their jobs. You’ll often have a patient or resident who needs more particular care. Nurses will know to watch them like a hawk in case the patient ends up in a situation they can’t extract themselves from.

Removing Limitations

This limits nurses from being able to do their routine tasks. This isn’t a negative on the nurses’ parts. They often handle situations like this very efficiently, rotating who stays within earshot depending on tasks and responsibilities at the moment. Yet even this efficient way of handling such a patient or resident wraps up at least one nurse at a time. It can also have an impact on nurse morale, making them feel as if they themselves can’t do their jobs as quickly or efficiently as they’d like.

With a wireless nurse call system, you no longer have to reserve that nurse to shadow a patient or resident. The patient or resident themselves may feel as if they aren’t as much of a burden as well, improving their experience.

Wireless nurse call systems also mean you’ll have less maintenance and that you can prepare reports with automated information gathering. It’s a more streamlined, mobile, efficient system that takes advantage of technology to help things run much more smoothly at any health care facility.

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There are a number of ways to help improve your hospital’s HCAHPS scores. These begin and end with service to a patient – have you helped that patient address their concerns and made them feel comfortable and cared for while at your hospital? Do patients feel more knowledgeable? Hospitals take a lot of steps when it comes to staff training and how to interact with patients. Yet what about the tools that help staff and patients connect in the first place – nurse call systems?

Too many hospitals and other health care facilities still rely on antiquated nurse call systems. These can be frustrating for patients to use. They’re wired to the bed or to the wall. If it’s a struggle to walk across the room just to sit by the window or be in a different position for a while, then it’s just as much of a struggle to walk back across the room to the nurse call button. If the patient has particular need to call a nurse, it may be because they can’t get back across the room in the first place. A patient in this situation can feel abandoned or forgotten.

With the technology we have today, it makes no sense to keep nurse call systems tied to the wall or bed. Wireless nurse call systems mean a patient can keep their call button around their neck. This makes calling for help easy. It also helps patients feel like the support you provide is constantly and readily accessible. It’s a simple change that can turn around a patient’s satisfaction with the care being provided.

Best of all, it’s not a costly shift to make. In the long run, you’ll end up saving more. If a wireless call button goes out, you replace it. If an old-fashioned call button goes out, you may have to rip up the wall to replace wiring. New systems are more reliable and even if they falter, they’re centrally located and accessible. If an old system falters, it could mean tearing open the walls of multiple rooms. Over time, the new wireless nurse call system can cut down on costs considerably.

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Do you manage a health care facility with patients or residents? Then you use some form of nurse call system. Many facilities are hesitant to upgrade from pull cord systems because they have to balance many different budgetary needs. Yet a wireless nurse call system can save money. In fact, it offers several advantages over older systems like pull cords:

Accessibility: A pull cord requires a patient or resident to be physically able to get to the pull cord. This isn’t always the case when a nurse is most needed – during a medical emergency. It doesn’t make sense that the system we use to call for help requires that we don’t need that help in the first place. A wireless system is based around buttons that hang from the neck – a patient always has access to them.

Supervision: Electronic supervision means that the wireless system alerts you to needs. A pull cord system requires your employees to sometimes shadow residents who are in bad shape to the point of aggravation. This way if the resident can’t get to the pull cord, an employee can use it to call for help. This shadowing doesn’t help your employee do their other work or help the resident feel relaxed. Constant electronic supervision to readily accessible nurse calls let your staff focus on all residents, as well as the other work that helps everyone be safe and secure.

Ease of Maintenance: When a pull cord system malfunctions, you have to dig into the walls to find and replace the broken parts. That means the repair cost goes beyond the system, and includes walls and even wires or pipes that need to be removed. That gets expensive fast. Wireless means maintenance only needs to happen on the central system and a few receivers. It’s less likely to break, needs less frequent repair, and maintenance is much quicker.

Inspector Reports: An electronic system like this can be set up to prepare its own reports. That saves your employees the hassle of looking back over records and compiling information. It also means fewer mistakes that inspectors can nail you on. It helps inspectors, and it helps you stay in business.

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One of the leading complaints in assisted living facilities is the reliance on old, outdated technology. Assisted living facilities and nursing homes aren’t exactly made of money, so the resistance to updating can be understandable. You have to budget for staff, equipment, meals, heating & cooling, basic needs, emergency response, transport…the list goes on and on. Make sure you don’t overlook new technologies that can help you save money, however. One of these is a nurse call system.

A nurse call system is a wireless, electronic way that residents can page nurses and other care personnel. In many facilities, this replaces outdated pull cord systems that require residents to be in specific locations, as well as physically able to reach the pull cord. This is counter-intuitive considering that these pull cord systems are most needed when a resident is least able to reach them.

It is important for your personnel to always be checking in on residents. Yet when residents are struggling in difficult physical (or mental health) situations where they might have to call for an emergency, this requires your personnel to nearly shadow residents full-time.

This isn’t a waste of time – it’s an aspect of caring for your residents. It is an inefficient use of time, however. It means your personnel will be able to give less attention to other residents. It means that your personnel won’t be able to do all the other work that ensures the health and safety of residents at your care facility. It may even annoy your employees, and it will almost certainly annoy your residents. That kind of frustration doesn’t help residents’ health, or your employees’ ability to handle a situation. It’s not a good solution long-term, especially when some residents may need this supervision for months or years. It’s not sustainable.

A wireless nurse call system enables residents to be able to call when they most need it, whether for themselves or for others. This doesn’t mean you can go completely hands-off, but it does mean both personnel and employees can feel safe in doing all their work and enjoying all their time. You can even link it into an indoor positioning system for nurses. Help isn’t a resident dragging themselves across a room to reach a pull cord. Help is being able to press a button hanging from a lanyard around your neck.

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Nurses are, undoubtedly, some of the busiest people on the planet. During nearly any shift, there are hundreds of different tasks that require their attention, and ensuring they get to each task and tackle patient needs is nothing short of an absolute must. Nurse call systems can help, but selecting the right one is an absolute must, or you’re likely to overwhelm your nurses with patient needs and their other tasks at hand. How can you select one that will work as hard as your nurses in your care facility? These tips can help.

• Choose More than Communication: Some nurse call systems are just that, a simple method of communication from the patient to the nurse’s station. Fortunately, with today’s technology, you can do so much more. Make certain your new nurse call system offers you the ability to view and manage information, instead of just reach from one station to another.

• Choose Growth: Some systems offer you a chance to grow as your facility does, and if you’re like many healthcare solutions these days, growth is where you want to be. Even if you’re not at your ideal size now, a scalable solution will help you get larger as quickly as needed.

• Choose Mobility: Many systems are tied into mobile devices to help with monitoring, and this can be a huge bonus to healthcare companies. Select a system that means the ability to go as mobile as necessary and monitor the system from a variety of different portals.

At CES, we can help you find a nurse call system to meet your needs. If you have an existing nurse call system that requires repairs or upgrades, we can help with that too. The key is to contact us today and chat about your healthcare facility’s needs.

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