Bon Secours Hospital
Ensuring the safety and welfare of your lone workers is a paramount priority across all sectors and industries.
Regardless of turnover, services offered, location… if you have staff who work alone, providing them with an effective means of communication should a problem arise is imperative. Failure to do so opens up a Pandora’s Box of problems.
The Healthcare sector is at the forefront of employing staff who work alone. Spread across a wide area, many carry out their duties alone or work alone within the community, dealing with patients and their families.
When healthcare workers work alone without clear procedures and with inadequate measures to check on their safety, problems can arise.
An effective lone worker policy will include the training of employees in areas such as conflict resolution, managing challenging behaviour and giving employees the skills to deal with potentially aggressive situations. When all of these fail, a method of fast communication to call for help is a must.
Bon Secours Hospital Cork, Ireland is no different to any other Healthcare facility when facing these problems. Bon Secours Hospital Cork is one of the largest independent catholic hospitals in Europe, catering for up to 18,200 admissions and 29,000 outpatient attendees a year.
The Hospital employs a range of staff who carry out duties on their own. Not only does this cover all Healthcare employees working within the hospital and the community, but contractors and facilities staff working alone in isolated areas of the hospital, such as plant rooms and service areas.
Kieran McNamara, Fire, Health & Safety Officer for Bon Secours was tasked with adopting a solution that would cover lone workers across the wide range of jobs undertaken.
Peoplesafe are well equipped to manage any emergency situation that should face those in need. With over 100 NHS Trusts in the United Kingdom using Peoplesafe’s solutions on a daily basis, there’s no other provider more suitable for cost-effective, 24 hour support for healthcare professionals.
With personal alarms and mobile applications that directly link users to Peoplesafe’s dedicated Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC), a call for help is just a button press away. Utilising GPS positioning as well as two-way audio, Peoplesafe’s expertly trained Alarm Controllers can immediately see who’s calling for help and their exact location. With direct links to UK police control rooms as well as the Irish Constabularies, help is never far away.
The preferred choice for Bon Secours Hospital Cork is the MySOS personal safety device. With fall detection so that even those who suffer a trip, slip or fall will be flagged with the ARC and help can be directed to the injured party.
All audio recordings and actions are digitally recorded and can be used for investigative purposes.
Kieran explained why they chose the MySOS, “the device is very lightweight and has a wide variety of applications, including fall detection, available on the market.”
“We were impressed by the connectivity via the roaming SIM card, it’ll connect to any mobile phone network ensuring areas of no coverage are a thing of the past.”
As such, all of Bon Secours lone workers have now been issued with Peoplesafe’s personal alarms and can rest safe in the knowledge that backup and support is just a fingertip away.
