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How a Georgia health system is aiming to protect staff | Safer Hospitals

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Chris Paravate of the Northeast Georgia Health System talks about the ways they are aiming to improve security, from technology to training.

Doctors and nurses nationwide have faced increasing violence in the workplace in recent years, and Chris Paravate says hearing those episodes has been disturbing.

Image: NGHS

Chris Paravate of the Northeast Georgia Health System says the organization is focused on technology and training to improve safety.

Paravate is the chief information officer of the Northeast Georgia Health System, and he’s heard of the incidents in huddles with staff and team leaders. And he says he was anxious to do more to help.

“Frankly, if one person is subject to a violent experience in emergency rooms, it’s one too many, and it's bothersome,” Paravate says.

Working with the technology firm Kontakt.Io, the Northeast Georgia Health System has given employees badges that have a small button that can be pressed for help if a patient or visitor is getting aggressive. The buttons send a silent alarm that alerts security and other staff that an employee needs assistance.

The health system began by testing the badges in the trauma center of Northeast Georgia Medical Center in Gainesville, and the organization has expanded use to the system’s other hospitals.

“People don't bring just their medical issues, they bring lots of other difficult situations and stress and anxiety,” Paravate says. “So this is a way for our staff to really communicate with us and to call for help in a quick way.”

In a recent interview with Chief Healthcare Executive®, Paravate talks about the success of the badges and how the system has focused on technology and training to help improve the safety of staff.

“Seconds count. They really do. It can be the difference between a de-escalation or some type of act of violence,” Paravate says.

Positive feedback

There are now 10,000 employees with the badges and silent alarm buttons, and Paravate says staff members have offered positive feedback for the devices.

Paravate says they began at Gainesville, the system’s largest medical campus, and its busiest emergency department. He says the system was designed to be easy for staff to use. As Paravate says, “If there's any apprehension about using it, it won't be successful.”

“We wanted to really make sure that clinical staff was comfortable with it, and that they would embrace it,” he says. “And quickly we found that the packaging, the non-invasive way that they could wear it, was really attractive to them.”

The technology is used in different ways. In emergency departments, a press of the alarm brings security to the employee under duress. For employees on inpatient floors, which don’t have security staff on each floor, the alarm notifies all nearby employees who can provide assistance until security arrives.

Employees have offered favorable responses to the new technology.

“As we look at our employee engagement surveys and feedback from our clinical staff, the feedback has been very positive,” Paravate says.

In addition to the technology offering more protection for staff, Paravate says the initiative is also engendering goodwill with employees, who see that the system is taking steps to help them.

“Actions speak a whole lot louder than words, or a monthly meeting or a newsletter or town hall,” Paravate says.

“The organization is willing to make an investment, an investment in making our staff safer,” he says. “So sometimes, you put your money where your mouth is. We have found a piece of innovative technology that we think merits investment for employee safety and also our feeling of safety. And you know, people's feelings and how emotionally safe they feel, how physically safe they feel, is not trivial.”

The technology alone isn’t the answer, but he says it’s another mechanism to improve the safety of staff and patients.

“It's not perfect. It’s not. There's no one solution, but hopefully we build enough layers that ultimately we protect those patients and those employees from any escalation, verbal or physical,” he says.

While Paravate says the main goal is protecting staff, he says the efforts to improve security and help staff feel safer could hopefully improve the system’s ability to retain talent.

“In a clinical environment where we've got lots of different challenges, we also have a lot of external competitors for the same staff,” Paravate says.

Training and technology

Even with the deployment of badges with silent alarms, Paravate says it takes more than technology along to protect staff.

That’s why the health system has been focusing on training employees on de-escalation strategies and ways to improve their own safety.

“Training is a big deal,” he says.

Some of the training involves thinking about positioning when an employee enters a patient’s room, and trying to be positioned closer to the door as much as possible. The training also involves simple reminders, such as trying to avoid standing in front of a patient's feet to reduce the risk of being kicked.

Security staff also lead training for active shooters, he says.

“We take that very seriously. Our security team leads that, and staff respond to that quite well,” Paravate says.

While the technology is being used to bolster security, Paravate says an ultimate goal is to also improve the patient experience. Since the badges offer the location of staff, Paravate says he’d like to eventually devise ways to alert families and loved ones when a doctor will be rounding on a patient’s floor. Eventually, he hopes the system can offer families the option of a video conference when the doctor is seeing the patient.

“Think about how incredibly impactful that is to not only the patient who, oftentimes at the end of life, is not in the capacity to make all the decisions or completely understand them, but to then be able to engage a family member and in providing those updates, providing care. So I think that's a big differentiator,” he says.

For now, he says, the technology and training are aimed at reducing the number of violent or hostile incidents for staff.

“We want to get as close to zero as we possibly can,” Paravate says.

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