DOORTOP MONITORING AND ALARM SYSTEMS
Helping keep vulnerable service-users safer
Rod Foot, Technical Project manager at specialist in door systems, hardware, and washroom accessories for mental healthcare settings, Kingsway Group, discusses the development and launch of the company’s new Kosmos Conscious Monitoring System.
The Kosmos Conscious Monitoring System was launched in May this year, very much born out of insight and customer need. When independent research concluded that 51% of all suicide attempts within a mental healthcare environment occur on or around the bedroom or bathroom door, the door alarm concept was born and taken into research and development. While the CQC has not yet mandated the use of alarmed doors and systems, there is a growing number of NHS mental health Trusts investing in this area to increase detection of ligature attempts, and, ultimately, to ensure that vulnerable service-users are safe in their care. In line with the questions that Trusts have to answer when being inspected by the CQC, implementing a ‘conscious monitoring system’ helps to demonstrate that practical solutions have been considered, and indeed put into action, when it comes to answering the questions ‘Are you safe?’, ‘Are you effective?’, and ‘Are you responsive to people’s needs?’ Harnessing technology to increase
staff and service-user safety is growing in importance in the mental healthcare sphere space, and is a trend that we only see growing. The Conscious Monitoring
System is the first of a portfolio of products we will be introducing to support Trusts and service-users. While there have been other systems on the market for some time, the Kosmos system has been developed with staff in mental healthcare facilities in mind to make it easier to ascertain where an incident has taken place, and – in an increasingly challenging environment – to provide full audit trails, aid insight, and give the ability to spot trends and potential ‘hotspots’ to prevent future incidents from happening.
Easy to install The Conscious Monitoring System is easy to install, and works in coordination with an already installed Kingsway alarmed complete door system, or in new-build projects where alarmed door systems are required. Set-up, training, and support, are all provided as part of setting a team up for success, and making the system and its use a positive addition to the working environment, rather than it feeling like an additional responsibility.
The development of Kosmos The original purpose of the system was as a reporting tool so that door alarm activations could be securely logged
and stored, meaning less reliance on the staff attack alarm system to log alarm activations. This is critical for a number of reasons: l Trusts have direct access to all alarm and fault information. Data is easily filtered, and reports produced which provide alarm information so that staff can identify trends – for example, alarms occurring at certain times of day, or in particular rooms.
l The CQC may request access to this historical alarm data during an inspection.
l Valuable information for mental health Trusts for auditing purposes, including for analysing sequences of events leading up to a ligature alarm.
l Of considerable value to Kingsway engineers for interrogating fault alarm data in order to determine commonalities.
A wider purpose However, based on conversations with clinical practitioners and Estates teams, it became clear that there was an additional need within challenging environments for the system to have a wider purpose, and, equally, for it be presented in a more user-friendly format, if it was to be truly beneficial and make information easier to understand, which is critical when an incident is taking place. This led to the creation of a screen that shows a geographical floor plan of the ward, to help pinpoint the location of an alarm activation. This undoubtedly represents an increase in visibility compared with conventional staff attack alarm systems, which simply provide a text description. The screen can be located either on a wall or desk within a nurse station or office, and when a ligature attempt occurs, both a flashing icon and an audible alert are activated to help reduce the time it takes to reach the incident area.
The Kosmos Conscious Monitoring System was launched in May this year, ‘very much born out of insight and customer need’.
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Sufficient insight to effect change The second area of feedback and insight pertained to testing, and the amount of information which would ideally be required to help arm the teams within a Trust with valuable information and insight
AUGUST 2022 | THE NETWORK
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