According to the results of a study, led by Dr Dominick Shaw and Dr John Blakey, in The University of Nottingham’s Division of Respiratory Medicine, a wireless replacement for the traditional hospital doctor paging system could free up nurses to spend more time with patients on the wards and reduce in-patient stays.
Published on the BMJ Open website, the study showed that the use of a wireless task requesting and tracking system, led to a 70% drop in adverse incidents at the Trust’s Nottingham City Hospital related to handover and out-of-hours response. The senior nurse acting as the night coordinator spent almost all of their time (97%) receiving, logging, and making phone calls under the old system. This fell to 42% under the new system – potentially freeing up 8,000 hours of senior nurse time each year for clinical work. Analysing the average length of in-patient stay between February and July in 2010 (old pager system in operation) and over this same period in 2011 (after the new system had been introduced), researchers found it fell by 13% on the wards covered by the new system but did not change on the wards not using wireless working. During the six months before the new system was introduced, 26% of cardiac arrest calls at the hospital were to obtain help with patients who were ill but had not arrested. This proportion fell to 11% after the new system was implemented. Interviews with staff showed they were more satisfied with the new system than the previous on-call pager system, rising from 62/90 on a standard satisfaction survey to 82/90. Dr Shaw said: “This new system forces you to provide all the necessary information so that the doctor is properly prepared and also stops unnecessary referrals.”
