XXXX
KEEPING STAFF & PATIENTS SAFE
The right policies and the right technology to keep lone workers safe
NHE talks to Dennis Hunt, health, safety and security manager at Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust.
D
ennis Hunt, health, safety and security manager at Hertfordshire Partnership
University NHS FT, was recognised at the National Personal Safety Awards 2014 for his personal contribution to keeping staff safe at work.
Hunt, who is also one of two local security management specialists (LSMSs) at the trust, told us why he was so determined to improve staff safety.
“It’s the very nature of our job. We provide services to people with mental health or learning disabilities in a range of settings, and as well as having our service users in inpatient areas – where there is a separate alarm system and panic alarms that staff carry on their belts – there’s a nucleus of workers who do lone working. We much prefer to treat service users in their own home environment; we believe they recover quicker than being put on a ward. So mobile working, which 10 years ago was just coming onto the scene, is now a given.”
The trust has 2,800 staff and more than 30,000 services users a year, across more than 80 locations. It offers community services, acute and rehabilitation services, and learning disabilities and forensic sciences. As well as its main Hertfordshire patch, it also provides services from bases in north Essex and Little Plumstead in Norfolk, so staff can find themselves in isolated and rural areas at any time of day in an emergency.
Lone workers Traditional lone worker strategies, such
74 | national health executive Nov/Dec 14
as buddying up and keeping ‘whereabouts boards’ up-to-date, have more recently been complemented by specialist technology.
Since 2010, the trust has been using the Identicom lone worker devices from Reliance Protect, which are styled discreetly to look like identity badges.
The badges are issued to individual lone worker staff assessed by the trust as being at high-risk – separate processes are used to keep low-risk and medium-risk staff safe.
High-risk staff are likely to come across threatening behaviour more often, Hunt said, such as mental health practitioners who have to section patients. Typically they would be escorted by police, but there is no guarantee police can stay on the scene if they get called to another incident. Community assessment team who visit people in their own homes may also have to deal with aggressive service users, family members or even pets.
Hunt said: “We don’t say to someone, you’ve got this device on you and you become Superman or Superwoman. It’s not a magic shield against violence and abuse. But when they’re out on their own, this device gives them an extra layer of reassurance, of being able to summon the police and emergency services if they need to.
“We tell staff not to get into the mindset of thinking they’ll only use it when they’re in someone’s home, for example. When they get up in the morning, they should put that device on, as far as I’m concerned. When they finish work at night, they should click it off and put
it on charge.” Responding to red alerts
The trust started with 190 devices from 2010, but on renewing the contract for a further three years, it upgraded to the latest GPS-enabled model and now has 620.
In four years, there have been eight genuine ‘red alerts’. When that function is enabled on the device, Reliance Protect staff at the 24/7 contact centre in Leeds can listen in to what is happening. They can then contact police on behalf of the trust, via a unique reference number (URN) rather than standard 999 channels, ensuring the call goes straight through to the relevant desk sergeant, who will immediately dispatch help.
Although two-way communication is possible, Hunt’s trust took the view that hearing voices coming from a
badge could make some
incidents worse and cause further distress for patients and service users with mental health problems, so it is just one-way.
After each red alert incident, Hunt organises follow-up meetings to check on the staff member’s state of mind and satisfaction with how the incident was handled, and publicises information to the rest of the trust to ensure lessons are learned. Hunt said he thinks these in-depth debriefings and their results are one of the factors that impressed the NHS Protect judges at the National Personal Safety Awards (Marsha Dennis, Andrew James and John Rodriguez of NHS Protect), organised by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust. Embedding such a large
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100