Vocera and the Night Transporters
April 10, 2009
Recently, while doing regular rounds as part of our ongoing support for one of our customers, I observed Kathy G (night manager) and a nurse pushing a bed with a patient in it to one of the nursing units. When I asked her where the transporter was (Brian M. was in the Night Transporter Group), she replied that she could not reach him.
I made a mental note to come back and chat with her regarding how we could make some modifications to Vocera’s calling behavior and workflow to help her in this type of situation.
She later had time to meet with me. I spent a few minutes discussing the concepts of “Urgent Call’ and “Urgent Broadcast,” and we also explored what the differences are:
- immediate connectivity to the recipient of the call without the opportunity to say “NO”
- the ability to break through a pre-existing call, and
- the ability to break through a Do Not Disturb)
As part of recent efforts to refine how Vocera is being used by this customer, I let her know that unit secretaries, RNs and aides now have the ability to Broadcast, Urgent Broadcast, and Urgent Call. After further discussion with Kathy, I gave all nurse managers the ability to locate users as well (which I also trained her how to do). I then gave all nurse managers VIP status, so they may do a soft break through of DND too (the Genie will announce “Here is…”).
We then discussed the advantages of having floating nurses, aides, etc. be members of the “Flex Team” group in Vocera, thus giving them the ability to add and remove themselves from the various nursing units and the ED.
- They will receive Broadcasts to the department they are working in
- They will not receive Broadcasts to their regular department
- All members of the present department will automatically be added to their Inner Circle (frequently called list)
- All members of the regular department will be removed from their Inner Circle
- They can be reached by the command “Call first name in present department”
With these minor Vocera profile modifications, a little bit of additional training, and some follow up reinforcement, we were able to empower Kathy to leverage Vocera’s roles-based calling features to reach the people she needs to efficiently.
