Keeping patients safe is a constant challenge. Here are three ways virtual patient observation systems, like Collette Health, keep patients safe.
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) considers patient safety “indistinguishable from the delivery of quality health care.” Patient safety is largely measured by the absence of patient harm – for example low rates of patient injury and mortality. When it comes to preventing adverse outcomes for patients, nurses are on the frontlines and often bear the responsibility for keeping patients safe. (Source: NCBI)
Keeping patients safe is a constant challenge, made more acute by the ongoing staffing shortages. Fortunately, emerging healthcare technologies can help to support nursing staff by assisting in patient safety monitoring. For example, the Collette Health remote observation solution leverages technology to enable live sitters to observe patients and identify a patient that could be at risk. Collette Health’s cloud-based platform provides proactive motion detection to direct the attention of sitters, and when an observer identifies that the patient is at risk, they can simultaneously verbally redirect the patient while sending an alert to the attending medical staff with the effortless click of a button. (Source: Collette Health Features).
Essentially, one Collette Health observer can monitor up to ten patients at once, keeping more patients safe without straining staff resources. Overall, there is more capacity for observation which means more patients and even staff can be kept safe. Let’s take a closer look.
Patient Falls
When it comes to patient falls, most healthcare providers are forced to be reactive. In most cases, patients are not assigned a sitter until they have already demonstrated risky behavior or suffered an accident – and that is if the nursing team has a 1:1 sitter available. The primary function of patient observation is to observe a patient with an elevated risk and prevent a bad outcome for that patient. The most pressing and preventable negative outcome is a patient fall. A remote patient sitter is expected to intervene if a fall-risk patient attempts to get out of bed. Intervention can mean verbal re-direction, calling onsite clinical staff for support, or even sounding an alarm. And with Collette Health, it’s easy to do just that.
Patient Wandering
Keeping patients safe doesn’t stop at patient falls. Collette Health observers can actually stop adverse events across the board, including patient elopement. Collette Health observers can stop patients from wandering by redirecting them if they attempt to leave the room. If the observer is unable to redirect the patient, they can immediately sound the alarm for a nurse to assist the patient in getting back in the room.
Mobility Limitations
Think of patients that are on mobility limitations. Maybe they’re not supposed to be using their right arm but keep doing so. How nice would it be to have someone to remind them, every time they go to use their right arm, to not use it? Often times, nurses just don’t have the time to stay in the patient’s room to tell them not to use their right arm every five minutes. This example could be applied to any limb, or even a post lumbar puncture patient. The more we can keep patients from doing harmful things, the faster they can heal.
If you would like to learn more or are interested in installing Collette Health in your healthcare facility, visit our Contact Us page.