Nurse tracking devices

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How do you guys feel about wearing tracking devices on your person? Your location displays on a computer screen where you are at inside the hospital at all times.

Thanks

Sometimes though (like when a nurse does a delivery) there's no time to get to a phone and with the system we have all we have to do is pull the call bell out of the wall and out emerg bell signals so staff come running. Carrying a phone might work but I may not have the time to get to it, that's why I like our system.

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Ortho.

Well they can page me. Im not wearing one. I will admit there may be good uses, however as we all know the main intent is to track nurse contact time with patients. I would almost guarentee that is they figured the math and found out their nurses were only spending a certain percent of their active work time in direct contact with patients (considering it doesnt tell them what you are doing,, only where you are) that nurse/patient ratios will go up. Anything to justify their staffing is acceptable.

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Specializes in ER.

I am going against the mainstream here, but I am old and crotchety, and will speak my mind. Any of you who are so nieve to think that management is looking after YOU by using the tracking devices are seriously deluding yourselves.

Things start innocently enough..."we are saving your fanny by being able to prove how many times you are in a patient room, or we are saving you time by being able to find another nurse quickly, or we can help you in an emergency". Then it becomes, "we noticed you were at lunch 35 minutes, you went to the bathroom 6 times in your shift, you were off the floor 22 minutes, where were you?"

We have already lost many freedoms in this country in the name of security, just go to the airport and see that. Are we going to go like sheep to the slaughter in our professions as well?

Either we are professionals or we are not. Many of us have advanced degrees, years of practice and dedication to our field. I doubt anyone in "management" is going to be wearing tracking devices.

Why not make us wear one at home to make sure we wear our seat belts, floss our teeth and go to bed on time. Either we are adult free citizens or we are subjects. The day I have to wear a tracking device is the the day I am no longer a nurse. Some of you people scare me.

Everyone has their line in the sand. There comes a point in your life where if you don't stand for something, then you have sold your soul.

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. (attributited to Benjamin Franklin)

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Specializes in Diabetes ED, (CDE), CCU, Pulmonary/HIV.

Amen to everything you said! But I guess I'm old and crochety too!

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Specializes in 5 yrs OR, ASU Pre-Op 2 yr. ER.

I personally would have no problem wearing one.

Done here.

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Specializes in Diabetes ED, (CDE), CCU, Pulmonary/HIV.
Is there any other profession that does this??? I find it insulting personally. Several staff members at the hospital where I work wear one. I've only worked there a little less than a year and they must have forgotten to issue one to me. My feelings are not hurt!!

In my other life BN (before nursing), I worked as a pension plan administrator. We wore ID badges that we used to badge in to any locked area. Mgmt got daily printout showing who was out of their work area & where they were. I didn't like it then and I don't like it now. Too "Big Brother is Watching You" for me. This was a small company run by a married couple who must have been sure we were tying to rip them off every day. Never had it happen anywhere else.

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I am going against the mainstream here, but I am old and crotchety, and will speak my mind. Any of you who are so nieve to think that management is looking after YOU by using the tracking devices are seriously deluding yourselves.

Things start innocently enough..."we are saving your fanny by being able to prove how many times you are in a patient room, or we are saving you time by being able to find another nurse quickly, or we can help you in an emergency". Then it becomes, "we noticed you were at lunch 35 minutes, you went to the bathroom 6 times in your shift, you were off the floor 22 minutes, where were you?"

We have already lost many freedoms in this country in the name of security, just go to the airport and see that. Are we going to go like sheep to the slaughter in our professions as well?

Either we are professionals or we are not. Many of us have advanced degrees, years of practice and dedication to our field. I doubt anyone in "management" is going to be wearing tracking devices.

Why not make us wear one at home to make sure we wear our seat belts, floss our teeth and go to bed on time. Either we are adult free citizens or we are subjects. The day I have to wear a tracking device is the the day I am no longer a nurse. Some of you people scare me.

Everyone has their line in the sand. There comes a point in your life where if you don't stand for something, then you have sold your soul.

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. (attributited to Benjamin Franklin)

I consider myself neither old nor crotchety, and I still agree with you, Dixielee. 100%. "nurse tracking device" sheesh

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Specializes in Critical Care.

https://allnurses.com/forums/f100/dozens-nurses-northern-california-hospital-balk-wearing-locators-22298.html

I quit my last job after protesting this nurse collar.

It has nothing to do with safety. THAT is how it is promoted to the end users.

To management, it's promoted as a tool to 'tweak' performance.

There's only one reason a hospital would pay a quarter million dollars for this system. It's because they've been promised that it would save more in salaries by improving performance, thereby reducing the need to staff better.

BTW, it does NOT prove that you were in a pt's room for 15 minutes. Countless workers left their badges in rooms while they took smoke breaks. . .

~faith,

Timothy.

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Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.

  • "Computer, where is Commander Data?"
  • "Commander Data is no longer on board the Enterprise."

Just like in Star Trek. I love it! Sign me up! I think the only ones who need to worry about being "tracked" are the people that are up to no good and intent on breaking the rules. Now, we'll be able to know what you're really doing and just how many smoke breaks you really take. There's a couple of CNAs and doctor's I'd like to put these things on.

We are free to chose our jobs, but when we are employed we are at the command of our employers and our time is not our own. If people want to be where they want during their hours of work, then they need to start their own company and be their own boss.

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We have had the system in place for over 5 years and there is NO "you were on break too long" at all. The system is not used in other parts of the hospital and we are not naive in using it ( and to say we are naive and deluded is somewhat insulting, like saying we are too stupid to realize what they are doing). It does not work when we are in the bathroom so they are not timing that either, nor does it tell the manager how many times we are in the room or for how long. Our manager also wears one so out with the theory that thay are watching us.

The system broke down and management did not want to spend the money to fix it, but guess who wants it back?? That's right the floor nurses, because we have had many a close call that could have turned out badly ( fortunatly they turned out ok). The system can have value when properly used.

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Specializes in Critical Care.

Long post: this was my official reply to management's implementation of a tracking system at my former job:

I preface my comments by quoting the AACN's position paper for Establishing and Sustaining Healthy Work Environments: "It is ethical to request, encourage, and deliver feedback on all facets of individual and organizational performance. It is unethical to ignore, discourage or fail to give feedback." I have an ethical imperative to provide honest, if passionate, feedback on the adoption of a tracking system for professional nurses:

I believe that it is unethical to require RNs to wear tracking devices for the purposes of administrative monitoring of care. These devices cannot measure the quality of work being provided by the professional nurse and cannot record the professional processes that dictate prioritization of care.

These devices can only measure the quantity of work. When the results of data generated by these devices are ultimately used, in evaluation and/or disciplinary action, the end result is to supplant quality of work for quantity of work. This goal, increased efficiency over increased quality, is contrary to patient advocacy and has the extreme potential to create high levels of moral distress among professional nurses who view bedside care as an art rather than a statistic.

Another result of this system is that it serves as an interruption to care. Nursing care is simply not a function of answering every call light as quickly as possible. Without a buffer system (charge nurse/CNA/secretary) to manage routine requests, the bedside nurse will simply be inundated with every call at the bedside, interrupting procedures such as IVs and Foley insertion, and more important, interrupting the undivided attention that bonds a nurse w/ a patient and leads to higher levels of care, understanding, and ultimately, satisfaction. Many nurses at hospitals that use this system report that the constant, routine interruptions created by this system served to de-personalize care. In addition, constant interruptions create the need to sort and reprioritize workloads, slowing down the nursing process. Simply put, the tracking and timing part of this system doesn't ensure efficiency, it just ensures swiftness. Instead of being able to group tasks in a timely fashion and by priority, the bedside nurse under this system feels compelled to answer requests in sequential order.

The professional nurse is a strategic member of the healthcare team. An essential quality of that professionalism is autonomy and accountability for care. This system undermines that autonomy by allowing undo managerial control of bedside accountability. At the moment the bedside nurse becomes accountable to management for room to room intershift activity, the ability to effectively provide priority care in priority order becomes subject to review by members of the healthcare team that cannot be privy to that decision making process by remote monitoring. The end result is that the use of this system deprives the professional nurse of the very professionalism that makes that nurse a strategic member of the team.

The ANA's position paper on 'Restructuring, Work Design, and the Job and Career Security of Registered Nurses' states, "When work redesign decisions affecting RN practice are being made, ANA insists that RNs from the affected workplace be at the table as a full partner so that the decisions will be justified in terms of both cost and effect on important patient outcomes, including mortality, LOS, patient satisfaction, and adverse outcomes." The ANA insists that the bedside nurse be intimately involved in change on this scale from inception to implementation. That has not been done. The AACN's 'Standards for Establishing and Sustaining Healthy Work Environments' lists as an essential standard that "Nurses must be valued and committed partners in making policy, directing and evaluating clinical care, and leading organizational change."

I have heard the key phrase - 100% buy-in. Because the opportunity for input in the design of this system was not offered, 100% buy-in seems like a far-fetched concept.

What will happen is that you will get a sharp increase in moral distress in nurses that view their jobs as a profession and a grudging acceptance with minimal compliance (within the means of testing the limits of undermining the system) by nurses that consider their job to be just that - a job.

THIS SYSTEM WILL ALIENATE THE PROFESSIONAL NURSE WHILE AT THE SAME TIME BE JUST ANOTHER JOB REQUIREMENT TO NURSES THAT DON'T CARE ABOUT THE QUALITY THAT GOES INTO THEIR WORK. I have heard this administration complain about 'nurses that are just in it for the money'. This system, which compromises professionalism, will entrench just those workers while alienating the very nurse the hospital professes to want to recruit and retain.

The components of the system that allow for easier bedside care are far outweighed by the negative aspects of the system. Those negative aspects will result from using data generated by these trackers to reduce nursing to nothing more than a timed skill.

I understand that this system has been touted to administration as a magical efficiency tool. Everything has its price. The cost of purchase and installation of this product will only be a fraction of the eventual cost of this system if the result is a systematic alienation of nursing staff.

I urge hospital administration to adopt a memorandum of understanding with its employees acknowledging that use of the system by professional nurses will not and cannot, under hospital policy, be used as a factor in evaluation and/or disciplinary action. Otherwise, I am alerting administration to be mindful of the potential costs of forced buy-in to a system that will only increase the moral distress of an already demoralized strategic resource. AACN - position paper - 'Moral Distress': "Moral distress is a key issue affecting the workplace environment. Research demonstrates that moral distress is a significant cause of emotional suffering among nurses and contributes to loss of nurses from the workforce. Further, it threatens the quality of patient care."

Respectfully submitted,

~faith,

Timothy.

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Specializes in Cardiac Care.

Timothy, that's a wonderful letter you sent to your management.

You said earlier that you quit that job; did they respond to this letter?

The implications of this tracking device should scare everybody.

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