Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER APRIL 2018 FEATURES 21 HEALTH & SAFETY 'Code white, code white' Staff-assist pendant helps with threats of violence By Michelle Lee Hoy and Danae Theakston S outhlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket, Ont., is committed to cre- ating a safe place for everyone who enters its doors. One of six hospitals in Ontario that make up the Joint Centres for Trans- formative Healthcare Innova- tion, Southlake has collaborated with its counterparts to share best practices around workplace violence prevention. at was evident recently when the health centre introduced a de- vice that's proven invaluable for employees in keeping them safe — a staff-assist pendant for trig- gering code whites when threats of violence arise. Focus on safety To maintain a "safe care environ- ment" and "healthy work envi- ronment," Southlake requires all employees to complete a manda- tory core curriculum annually to comply with legislative require- ments, Ministry of Health direc- tives and accreditation standards. It also provides an employee and family assistance program (EFAP) to support staff and physicians in all aspects of their personal and work lives. But following an incident of workplace violence in its emer- gency department in 2013, Southlake began a quality im- provement journey to infuse a culture of safety throughout the organization. A corporate workplace vio- lence prevention committee was created — made up of representa- tives from interprofessional clini- cal teams, the joint occupational health and safety committee, unions and the hospital's senior leadership — to address ongoing concerns around people safety and to reduce the risk of work- place violence. From this com- mittee, the staff-assist pendant solution was realized. This wearable device, made readily accessible to all staff any- where in the hospital, was devel- oped by leveraging the hospital's existing real-time locating sys- tem to immediately transmit the location of the person initiating the request. Depressing the button on the pendant sends a message to the hospital's telecommunications department and security showing the last location of the pendant and the person wearing it, or the last sensor passed. is allows for swift response to a code white. Not only is se- curity immediately en route, but telecommunications staff will announce an accurate location through the intercom system, prompting a response from the code white team. While the tool was success- ful in helping to locate and track staff, with an average 20-second response rate, the early versions had design flaws that led to the buttons being inadvertently pushed, resulting in false alarms. So Southlake and Versus Technol- ogy worked together to redesign the pendant to reduce the number of times the buttons was uninten- tionally pushed. The button on the pendant went from being convex to con- cave with a ring around it to pro- tect it from being hit when people leaned over or bumped into ob- jects, and was reprogrammed so it had be held for one second to signal a code white. Throughout the improve- ments, the overall number of in- advertent pushes decreased from a monthly average of 5.4 per cent to 0.3 per cent. The pendant has become a tool for not only increasing safety but providing staff with a greater sense of security. rough the collaborative ef- forts of stakeholders across the organization, and by leveraging a common tracking tool used in health-care facilities, Southlake Regional Health Centre was able to rapidly implement the staff- assist pendant without the time and expense of rolling out a new enterprise-wide system. In gaining commitment and creating a governance struc- ture to enable transformational change across the organization, persevering through challenges with the implementation, hold- ing firm to goals, and ensuring the solution worked seamlessly, collaboration and a culture of safety was made possible. Both at Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket, Ont., Michelle Lee Hoy is a strategic communications consultant and Danae Theakston is a corporate communications as- sociate. For more information, visit www.southlakeregional.org. Credit: Spotmatik Ltd (Shutterstock)

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