What Is A Sick Call System And What Are Its Usages?

Posted by totalmedtech on January 25th, 2020

This device allows patients in care establishments (rest homes, care homes, hospitals, and retirement homes) to alert staff if they are in difficulty.

Patients activate Jeron 13665B equipment (pear, remote control, zipper) present in their room (near the bed, sanitary facilities, etc.), which remotely signals that they need assistance thanks to a system of LEDs (light-emitting diodes).  From now on, the equipment can differentiate the calls made from the sanitary or the bed, allowing better targeting by the health personnel.

When an alert is activated, an indicator light appears in the room of nursing staff and sometimes on a pediment of a door of the room concerned. Thanks to newer technologies, these calls can also be transmitted to staff mobile phones.

These phones are called DECT (Digital Enhanced Cordless Telephone), that is to say, that they meet a specific standard and operate on a frequency range from 1 880 to 1 900 micro hertz. It is also possible to use Wi-fi technology or paging (beeps or pagers).

Nowadays, the indicators are more precise and allow them to have a faster reaction and adapted to the situation. The staff can immediately see the urgency of the call signaling whether a team has already moved, has taken care of the patient, or if a team is still on-site and requests reinforcement, etc. thanks to the color or the flashing of the LEDs.

The sick call (or nurse call) works either with wired equipment (wired nurse call) or wireless equipment (wireless nurse call), with radio frequencies. Wired equipment requires a longer installation than wireless. However, it is considered to have better reliability and therefore avoids electromagnetic pollution.

Also, there is the possibility of making use of the pre-existing cable installation, which makes it possible to reduce the time of installation of the material but also its cost.

These nurse call devices not only give the alert, but they also make it possible to analyze the statistics of the service:

• Several calls and nature of calls per day/month/service
• Which patient? How frequently?
• Staff response time.

What response did the staff give to the alert (room transfer, telephone call, etc.)?

Also, new and more advanced nurse call systems have appeared on the market in recent years. Patients can have pendants, bracelets, or watches with which they can report an emergency wherever they are on the premises of the establishment.

These devices are, for the most part, equipped with geolocation equipment allowing patients to be helped even if they are not in their room.

This new technology has two main advantages:

• It allows staff to maintain their mobility while ensuring the safety of patients in the service through better responsiveness (patient rescue wherever they are, better readability on the location of patients, etc.),
• It allows patients to feel safe when they leave their room because they know that the staff can intervene if an emergency occurs in an elevator, the garden, etc., this system thus offers them a marked improvement in their quality of life.