In a survey last year carried out by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) a quarter of the 2,800 nurses surveyed said they had been physically assaulted, with 80% of A&E nurses reporting that they had been assaulted in the past year. The Department of Health confirmed there has been a 15-fold increase in prosecutions for attacks on NHS staff.
The Minder products provide fast, reliable and secure two-way messaging and the system can be easily set up to allow monitoring to begin immediately.
The product range includes Datacall Guardian, ideal for small numbers of lone workers, Datacall Minder which protects staff in isolated areas and Adept Minder which relies on cellular LAN or WAN technology and has voice and text functions for increased security in high risk areas.
One of the first sites to use the system was The Royal Victoria Hospital in Blackpool, part of the Fylde and Wyre Hospitals NHS Trust. The physical layout of its new A&E department compounded the threat of violence against staff and, as a result, from the outset a radio-based Minder System was installed.
The Minder System, including 40 mobiles carried by individual staff, allows mobile users to initiate several different types of alarm, providing a quick and easy way of summoning assistance either for medical reasons or in case of an assault. As a direct result of its successful introduction, the adjacent Parkwood Psychiatric Hospital also ordered a Minder System with 100 mobiles.
