5 RTLS-Based Nursing Interventions for Safety
Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS) help providers address prevalent safety issues in nursing.
Nurses have essential roles in hospitals. From providing high-quality patient care to locating and managing equipment, they balance many responsibilities while on the job. During their shifts, nurses follow a nursing care plan, which is a formal process that ensures efficient communication between nurses and doctors.
Nursing interventions are a crucial part of the nursing care plan — they are actions or procedures taken by a nurse to improve a patient’s condition or health. Health care providers should offer nurses acceptable pathways to these interventions, ensuring nurses have clean, accessible equipment and location certainty during duress situations. Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS) help providers address prevalent safety issues in nursing.
Nursing Interventions Accessible Through the Prosight Solution
From misplaced equipment to instances of staff duress, discover how the Cox Prosight RTLS-based solution helps health care providers help keep their nurses and patients safe. Because of the real-time tracking capabilities offered by Cox Prosight, providers can help nurses successfully take the following actions:
1. Ensure equipment receives proper maintenance and is functional before it gets to the patient.
Studies show nearly one-third of nurses spend an hour of their shift looking for equipment. A lack of functioning or locatable equipment can delay patient care and even cause some nurses to hoard equipment for fear of not finding what they need when they need it.
Cox Prosight helps staff find equipment in real time by floor, department, or asset type. Nurses can see if the equipment is functioning, clean, and ready for patient use. And if equipment needs to be cleaned or returned, nurses receive alerts on their desktop, tablet, or smartphone, helping them streamline maintenance processes.
2. Locate emergency equipment for patients smoothly and effectively.
During patient emergencies, time is of the essence. Nurses need to be able to immediately locate clean and functioning emergency equipment without searching throughout their unit. Whether it’s locating a defibrillator, EKG, or patient monitor, the Prosight RTLS platform can help improve staff efficiencies in times of emergency. Through the solution’s interface, nurses are able to quickly track down the resources they need.
3. Locate areas of staff duress and enable quick response times.
According to the World Health Organization, between 8% and 38% of health care workers suffer from physical violence at some point in their careers. RTLS solutions, like Cox Prosight, can help aid responses to workplace violence and faster response times. Through the platform, nurses can signal for help, which activates instant notifications to others in their unit, floor, and hospital.
Prosight even allows staff to escalate alerts, requesting additional help and generating timely responses. Whether in emergent or non-emergent situations, the platform gives security and staff real-time visibility into all nurses’ locations. Plus, it allows staff to pinpoint locations to help decrease overall emergency response time, which is essential to improving nurse and patient safety.
4. Discover dangerous changes in temperature conditions within rooms.
Hospitals have hundreds of temperature-sensitive areas to monitor, which include operating and patient rooms. Manually checking these temperatures can be extremely time-consuming for bio-medical staff — often inhibiting patient care. Through Prosight’s Environmental Monitoring, staff no longer have to go from room to room checking temperatures, instead receiving automated alerts if temperatures dip too low. This feature streamlines temperature checks for bio-med staff, thus removing potential obstructions to care for nurses.
5. Quickly respond to patient alerts with nurse call system integrations.
With so many patients to attend to, optimizing operational efficiency is essential to streamlining care for nurses. Prosight RTLS nurse call integration syncs nurse call systems with staff tracking to ensure transparent communication. Alerts are sent via the hospital’s nurse call system; then, as a nurse enters the room, our system cancels the alarm using RTLS tracking technology. Other nurses are thus alerted that a patient is being taken care of, and that they can focus on other places in need of their focus.
Enable RTLS-Based Safety Interventions in Your Facility with Cox Prosight
From monitoring temperature-sensitive areas to receiving timely responses during emergencies, there are many safety concerns in nursing. RTLS technology solutions give nurses a way to efficiently intervene, improving patient and workplace safety. Cox Prosight will help you streamline and modernize your hospital’s operations while providing reliable responses to nurse duress.
Our secure solution gives your hospital the capability to track and monitor assets, environments, and staff. Contact our team today and discover how Cox Prosight can help you address some of the unique challenges your nurses face every day.
