DOORTOP MONITORING AND ALARM SYSTEMS


to help effect change. It became clear that there is a need to monitor the health and status of every single door alarm within each ward. The Kosmos system will initiate an audible and visual fault alarm if anything goes wrong on a door, such as loss of power, or an alarm cable being accidently severed or disconnected, which will help to ensure that doors are active and doing the required job. Kosmos also electronically logs


every time a bedroom or en-suite door is opened or closed. This information could be valuable, as it would provide a ‘sequence of events’ leading up to a ligature attempt. It also highlights if a patient leaves their room, at night-time for example, and alerts staff to unusual behaviour. This is also applicable to doors fitted with vision panels; again information is electronically logged, and can be useful in determining things such as how often staff are undertaking night-time checks.


A need for checks As with all door alarm systems, regular checks need to be undertaken to ensure the ‘health’ of the system. We have designed the system to make this as as easy as possible for staff, who need only press the alarm strip on each of the three door edges. A LED light located on the outside of the door then illuminates for reassurance, and the alarm press is logged so that all weekly checks are available for retrieval. This electric logging facility can be visible to both the NHS Trust or Kingsway, which can help in ensuring that safety checks are up to date, and by alerting the relevant personnel if this is not the case, again helping to alleviate the risk of alarm failure.


Deploying Kosmos within a ward The Kosmos Conscious Monitoring System can be added to existing wards where Kingsway door alarms are operational, and connected to the staff attack alarm or patient call system. This is achieved using a new Kingsway product called a ‘Kosmos network bridge’. Once the network bridge is securely fitted to the existing door alarm interface, this then permits all the alarm information to be transmitted over a CAT5e network and into a dedicated PC. In turn the PC connects to a display monitor located in the staff office or nurse station. It’s important to note that the PC does not need to be connected to the Trust’s IP or Wi-Fi network. All of the sensitive alarm data is securely stored on the PC, for local retrieval only by Trust members who have the password credentials which allow access to the alarm logging information. Kosmos alarm data is also not held on any kind of cloud-based applications, which should help to minimise the risk of data breaches.


Benefits for mental health Trusts The ultimate purpose of Kosmos is to provide ward staff with the best


THE NETWORK | AUGUST 2022


A screen that shows a geographical floor plan of the ward, to help pinpoint the location of an alarm activation.


technology, which further increases service-user safety within mental health environments. It helps demonstrate to overseeing bodies such as the CQC that best practice is being adhered to, and, ultimately, to reduce the number of patient ligature attempts. This is greatly aided by the new Kosmos graphical alarm interface. By viewing the building floorplans upon an alarm activation, staff can easily see the location of the alarm on the floorplan as an icon flashing next to the door, along with a distinguishable siren sound. The advantage of the graphical alarm is that new or ‘bank’ staff are not always familiar with room numbering, and consequently a line of text on an LCD panel may not provide enough meaningful location information to permit a fast response.


Going ‘paperless’ also helps remove one job which has traditionally been required. As door- alarms are deemed as


The Sentry door system is a full-door edge ligature alarm system; if any ligature is trapped against any of the door edges, it triggers an alarm.


33


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