Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust plans to expand a new IP-based communications system to improve patient care by freeing up staff time.

The system, BT Managed Vocera, created through a partnership between BT and Vocera Communications, operates over a BT wireless local area network allowing doctors and nurses to communicate more efficiently.

Users can speak to each other instantly anywhere in the hospital through a voice-controlled, wearable badge that weighs less than two ounces.

The system, which can be integrated with an existing switchboard, can broadcast to a number of people, such as a team of specialists, to form a rapid response unit, and can find staff by function and location.

Following an initial trial, 1,200 hospital workers at Nottinghamshire-based Kings Mill Hospital, including receptionists, porters, doctors, nurses and consultants, are communicating using the voice-controlled badges. The system is now being rolled out Trust-wide - including at Newark Hospital - later this month.

Instead of having to find a telephone, pager systems or searching for colleagues, staff just say the person’s name or the department they are looking for, to be automatically connected enabling faster communication in an emergency.

Phil Bolton, trauma and orthopaedic nurse specialist at King’s Mill Hospital, said: ‘We often need a second opinion from a colleague and previously, unless they were close at hand, we’d have to bleep them to make contact. BT Managed Vocera enables us to do this without leaving the patient’s side.’

Carl Miller, superintendent radiographer at the hospital, says he can continue to x-ray patients even when a problem arises.

‘I’m told about the issue immediately via the badge and can think of the best solution while I continue to work. So multi-tasking has become a reality,' he said.

Jeffrey Worrall, the Trust’s chief executive, says the system has allowed patients admitted to accident and emergency to be moved more quickly into admitting departments as the badge speeds up communications between A&E and site co-ordination staff.

‘As well as transforming patient care, this technology can also improve the way we provide our services and help boost efficiency.’

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