Supporting the delivery of high-quality compassionate care using nurse call systems

The safety of residents of a care home should be of paramount importance to all staff. Care homes implement a number of measures to ensure residents remain safe and secure at all times, these can range from surveillance systems to nurse call systems.

Though not a legal requirement, nurse call systems can be found in many homes and hospitals and are the most common choice for ensuring residents nursing needs are monitored. Some systems are wired and some are fitted with more modern wireless models, but all act as a lifeline to residents.

is an independent company with more than 25 years’ experience and knowledge in the supply and installation of nurse call systems and is able to recommend radio or wireless call systems to suit a range of budgets.

Supplying wireless radio nurse call systems from brands such as Aid Call and Courtney Thorne to care homes and health care services across the UK have the benefit of having no cabling, enabling them to be installed quickly and easily into a variety of environments with minimum disruption.

Commenting on the benefits of installing a nurse call system, marketing co-ordinator for Aid Call, Sarah Hunt, said: "Unlike other call systems, a nurse call system offers an all-encompassing care solution. They combine information from many separate devices and communicate this clearly and simply from one place.

Nurse call systems can provide residents with assistance in a moments notice

“For instance, an Aid Call system can provide paging, staff attack alerts, telecare support, security monitoring and can utilise DECT telephones. This is in order to accommodate the varying needs of residents in modern care establishments, to reduce response times to emergency calls and to provide more information to staff so those calls are dealt with more efficiently."

Residents in care homes and patients in hospitals can require assistance at a moment’s notice, when there is not always a staff member around, resulting in them requiring a nurse call system that is reliable and efficient.

Wireless radio nurse call systems can help accommodate changing furniture positions and requirements within the home and although units run on batteries, the displays give a low battery warning in plenty of time, allowing them to be changed easily.

Contained in the Care Quality Commission guidelines for inspection, are the top five areas inspectors check when they are inspecting the standards within a home or care provider. These include: Are they safe? Are they effective? And are they responsive to people’s needs? Nurse call systems can help to ensure these questions can be answered successfully on inspection and ensure residents’ needs are met and maintained.

Commenting on what they expect providers to deliver when providing safe and high-quality care, a CQC spokesperson said: “Making sure that the people who are running care homes are delivering high-quality and compassionate care for the people who live there is so important.

“Our inspection teams ask the right questions in order to get under the skin of the quality of a care home – assessing whether services are safe, caring, effective, responsive and well-led – and really focus on the things that matter to people’s individual needs and personal preferences.

“We expect providers to be listening and responding positively to people’s individual care needs.”

Care home group, Springcare Ltd use a Courtney Thorne nurse call system to ensure they have a flexible and reliable nurse call system installed in their homes, while recognising the importance of having a similar system in place to ensure the safety of both residents and staff.

Matt Cox, maintenance manager at Springcare, commented: “We sought feedback from the staff in our homes. The nurses and carers said they found the system very straightforward and our management can view key statistics simply by clicking a button. This really helps for CQC as they can see the confidence our teams have in the system and, if we ever did have a complaint, we can look at historical data to investigate what happened.”

'It is essential that residents feel able to alert the staff when required'

Nurse call systems are a way for care homes to ensure staff are able to respond positively to people’s individual care needs, as and when they require support.

Professional lead for Older People and Dementia Care at the , Dawne Garrett, commented: “Nurse call systems can be incredibly useful for residents to summon staff. The difficulty is for residents who go in to care homes with cognitive impairment, they may not be as easy to use or understand as other systems they may have previously used.

“It is important to assess each individuals’ needs carefully, talking with their family and friends and finding out what the best method is for them to summon help and assistance.

“If there was not a means of summoning help, people would not be discharging a duty of care and people would receive lots of criticism if they didn’t have some kind of call system in place, as residents need access to some kind of system where they can summon assistance.

“The real skill is assessing that a resident can use the system and they are able to use it for what it’s mean to be used and someone will come and respond, equally a care home has to have enough staff to respond to call bells.”

Nellsar Care Homes have nurse call systems installed in all of their 13 homes, which have been proven to support and save the lives of many residents. Gillian Dixon, operations manager of Residential Services commented: “With our current nurse call systems we are able to plug in hand operated push button alarms for people to summons help from staff when required. This is great for those who have the ability to understand how to use them and when they need to.

“However, where these systems really come into their own is when we are able to plug into the system an alarmed floor mat or alarmed mattress mat. In a dementia setting the residents are not always able to understand how to push the button to gain assistance. Therefore if you have a frail person attempting to stand to access the bathroom, they may be at risk of falling. By setting off the alarm on the mattress or floor mat - the staff are automatically alerted to that person being up and about or at least stirring and can attend the room promptly, thus preventing falls.”

Nurse call systems enable residents to be more independent and have less intrusion

Manager of Nellsar care home, Loose Valley Care Centre in Maidstone, Marisa Spice, said: “We have nurse call bell points all over the home. All staff are trained on how to use the call bell, especially how to summon assistance in an emergency.

“New residents and their families have the call bell system explained to them and a risk assessment is completed for each resident. For those residents unable to use the call bell system, Mental Capacity Assessments and risk assessments are completed to identify alternative solutions for communication and safety.

“It is essential for the confidence of each resident and their loved ones, that they feel able to alert the staff when required. It is a dignified method, instead of calling out and can be a lifeline when they are unwell and need assistance.

“The volume of the call bell (which sounds around the whole home) is reduced at night time so as not to interfere with the residents’ sleep too much. In the event that there is a system failure with the call bell, immediate action is taken and all staff are informed so that they check more regularly on the residents until the call bell function is fully restored.

“This system enables residents to be more independent and have less intrusion, especially if you know they will only want to be disturbed when they actually request assistance.”