Dozens of nurses at Northern California hospital balk at wearing locators

FroggysMom · Oct 4, 2005

I, too, have first hand experience with these locators. I have to say, Zash is right on!
Believe it or not, they even referred to your "stats" on your evaluation. Very interesting I thought for a device that was advertised to me when I started at the facility as a "personal safety device".
One of my closest coworkers was actually written up for "spending too much time in some pts. rooms"s!!!!
Needless to say, I didn't work there for too long. :uhoh21:

You've got to be kidding me!!! There are patients that need more time and it's hard enough to be able to give the basic time required for patient care, much less any 'extra' time for support, patient questions, etc.

Bean counters..... I HATE BEAN COUNTERS whether they be in the form of hospital administration, consultants, or insurance companies. They throw money at non-solutions but ignore the reality. What part of the word "caring" don't they understand? Responsibility is a two way street. We are responsible for patient care - they are responsible for assuring that the caregivers have enough time and resources to provide good patient care. The word "good" does not equate to the word "marginal".

I need to stop...my BP is rising.

:angryfire

DutchgirlRN, ASN, RN · Oct 4, 2005

About two dozen nurses at Eden Medical Center near San Jose, Calif., have turned in the personal locator devices the hospital had required them to wear. The hospital contends the devices help provide more efficient patient care, but the nurses say they are a Big Brother-like intrusion.
San Jose Mercury News, Sept. 6, 2002
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/4015298.htm

I can't get the link. What is a locator? We use beepers which are bad enough. They page us in the breakroom, the bathroom, busy with a patients, whatever. We've had the beepers for over 5 years. They are now considering cell phones. Oh please! It's bad enough already. You can hit the quiet button on the beeper for a minute or two until you get to the room. How can you hang up on a patient or how can you answer the phone in the middle of starting an IV. Can you imagine checking your patient voicemail?

Works2xs · Oct 9, 2005

I wonder what problem management is looking to solve with the implementation of such devices. It seems to me that if the device is supposed to help locate you when you are needed, then the fact that it can be rendered temporarily inoperable by a visit to a bathroom, breakroom, or simply by moving the tracker to a location below your waist, then the ability to find you at a moment's notice is effectively defeated. IF it's that important to be able to instantly locate you, then such a device would need to be "on" no matter where you were or what location on your body the device was located. Because of the limitations of the tracking device in these instances, a cell phone would clearly be the superior choice.

If the purpose is simply to gather trend data related to responses to patient call lights, a simple key fob proximity detector at or near the patient's bed would be sufficient to track such data. Response times could be trended and the whereabouts of the nurse outside the room would stay off the radar. Heck, you could even take the low tech approach of using timers that are toggled on/off by the patient mashing the button to when the nurse resets it.

The funny thing about the call bell issue and judging "efficiency" solely on the basis of response time is that these devices are completely useless in gauging "effectiveness" of any response. I might be on the top of the efficiency chart in response times. However, if the care delivered once I arrive is crap, how would management know? From patient feedback? That's no different than what exists now. Management would have to observe the interactions (or have a proxy do it for them). Which wouldn't be any less time intensive for the observer than if they parked someone on the floor to audit response times in the first place. The end result is there's no difference in improving "client" satisfaction than currently exists. The addition of such devices simply adds to their already stressed bottom line.

If this were a manufacturing industry, then I could see the need for heavy scrutiny of time/motion studies. If it were a shipping or rental business, I could see the need to track assets. Were it a safety issue, then being able to instantly see where someone was when there was a chance that they were incapacitated would certainly be necessary. But nursing isn't about those sorts of issues. It's a business that deals with the most unpredictable, demanding, and time consuming entities known: humans. This aint about turning screws or welding joints. Such overly simplified approaches as tracking individual movement to deal with human issues is flawed at best and an invasion at worst. These sorts of "tools" end up being a crappy substitute for management's unwillingness to get off THEIR asses and put an eyeball on the situation.

And just in case someone feels this point of view is a worker's biased view of the "real" challenges faced by management, let me set your worries to rest. Having a degree in management and the better part of 2 decade's worth of management experience, I've seen similar "great" ideas posed in other situations. They uniformly turn out to be ineffective and costly. The stated purpose of the existence of such monitoring is typically not met; the "care and feeding" associated with the compilation, review, and interpretation of data costly; and the ability of the workers to quickly thwart the system's data collection means unusually creative. The truely ironic part about this sort of thing is the first people who get canned after the implementation of such systems are the line and middle managers. The same fools who think that automated tracking systems are great also think that it makes the eyes on the line obsolete. And after they've thinned front line management, they're even LESS able to monitor and respond to problems.

The whole thing makes me want to dump ice water down someone's back.

bsnrnoh · Oct 9, 2005

First I have never worked anywhere or heard of these things before this thread, so please correct me if I have some information wrong.

Second, I am kind of a privacy nut. I like mine and respect others and think that HIPPA, though sometimes a PITA is a good thing.

Now, WHAT ARE YOU THINKING WHEN YOU ARE WEARING THESE THINGS!!!

They are treating you like a tagged animal in the wild to be studied and tracked to find your natural habits.

Of course everyone would like to know where everyone else is when they need help. To each and every person our (universal our) needs are the most important at the time. Just remember that management also thinks its needs are the most imortant thing to them. That means showing productivity, profit, and pinning the blame for anything that goes worng on someone else so they retain their bonus.

Please let me know if I understoon this corretly. Thses devices allow someone to call you and talk to you in a non-private manner about a pt in another pt's room? If so this seems to be a HIPPA violation waiting to happen. All it would take is for someone to say a name instead of a room number on one of these and for the pt to recognize the name for word to get around and state to have a fit.

Just the opinion of someone who never has and never will be tagged unless they chase down and drug me.