Keeping Staff Safe at Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist

Company Info

Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist is a pre-eminent academic health system based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and part of Atrium Health Enterprise. They are dedicated to providing the highest quality services and improving the health of their region, state, and nation.

The Issue

Almost 80% of nurses reported being physically attacked on the job within the last 12 months (Scientific American, Dec. 31, 2014), and across all industries, health care workers experience the highest level of nonfatal workplace violence. While Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist has an exceptional security team and places a strong emphasis on security, they recognize they are not immune to this issue.

As part of their ongoing practice, Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist holds a daily safety huddle to discuss safety topics, including reports of staff being hurt or threatened by patients or visitors. A key concern is how to best request and deliver a rapid response when emergency assistance is needed.

Like most hospitals, Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist had deployed hard-wired, discretely mounted panic buttons throughout its campus, with higher density in high-risk areas such as parking decks, behavioral health units, and outlying campus pharmacies. However, incidents still occurred, and staff were concerned about whether they could find and reach a panic button when needed.

The wall-mounted emergency call buttons covered only a small percentage of the campus. If incidents occurred outside of arm’s reach of the buttons, help could not be effectively called. Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist needed a solution that provided universal coverage across the campus and allowed security to respond to the exact point of need. The need was clear, and the expectation for resolution was coming from the top of the organization.

The Solution

With the requirements determined, Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist tasked their Office of Enterprise Visibility (EV) with reviewing current systems to find a viable solution. The team looked to the comprehensive RTLS deployment as the source. Leveraging the existing investment, the EV office was able to deploy a state-of-the-art Staff Duress system quickly, increasing staff safety dramatically in a matter of weeks.

The implementation included:

• ​Workflow planning, system configuration, and RTLS badge distribution to staff
• ​Staff could request help by pressing a button on their badge, sending an alert to the centralized security station
• ​The alert displayed the staff member’s identity and exact location, enabling immediate dispatch of security
• ​The system delivered incident metrics and reporting capabilities that were previously manual or not collected
• ​The badge could also be used to request nonemergency assistance, improving patient safety

Key elements of the solution:

• ​Strong collaboration and commitment by leadership at all levels
• ​Design of a new notification process and procedure using the staff duress software
• ​Implementation of a full RTLS badge and system, allowing programmable buttons to initiate staff duress requests, share real-time location, and distribute multiple alert notifications
• ​Deployment of RTLS staff badges from CenTrak, sized to fit with employee ID cards, with three programmable buttons standardized for staff duress and urgent assistance requests
• ​Development of alert visibility through software display; notifications sent to the Emergency Communications Center (ECC) regardless of activation location
• ​Badge configuration, distribution, and training for approximately 8,000 staff members
  • ​Average training time per staff member was under 3 minutes
  • ​Creation of a single-page instruction sheet for staff
  • ​New employees receive the badge and training during orientation

The Impact

After training, staff were ready to use their badges. The speed and efficiency of the alert process were apparent immediately. Staff could get help with a quick push of a button, no matter where they were. When an incident occurs and a button is pressed, ECC staff are notified instantly and multiple officers are dispatched. While en route, ECC staff use the software to view the location and phone number of the closest workstation phone for the staff member who called, then call that number to determine if additional information or resources are needed.

Staff duress notifications are also sent to leadership via instant text message. At the department level, alerts are shown on large LCD displays at nurse stations, providing a continuous display of all staff and patients on the floor, as well as pending alerts.

The most important result is that response time to alerts has been shortened. Alerts are now sent when staff feel vulnerable, rather than waiting until an incident occurs. Many incidents have been resolved faster or avoided entirely due to the proactive nature of the solution.

CenTrak's RTLS Staff Duress System has helped the security team provide the fastest possible response to emergencies. Most importantly, Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist now has a solution that gives their staff peace of mind and keeps them safer than ever before.