Mental Health- Challenges and Solutions

Integrated Wireless (IW) legitimised itself as the top duress provider throughout Australia at the recent 3^rd Annual Mental Health Units (MHU) Conference at the Sydney Harbour Marriott in June.

This conference focused on achieving best practice in MHUs and challenges faced in this environment- such as risk management, nursing recruitment and retention, reducing restraint and safety of women in inpatient settings.

IW were the only emergency wireless vendor present at this conference, highlighting our passion and dominance in this market. Many of the challenges mentioned above can be solved through a complete emergency duress solution increasing both perceived and actual safety for nursing staff. 

This event was highly successful and gave IW the opportunity to touch base with several existing clients from hospitals such as Hornsby, Manly, St George, Shell Harbour, Burwood and Southern Health. This proved very worthwhile to not only re-assure customers of our presence, but to hold discussions regarding future solutions for their particular facility.

Thank you to all those who took the time to stop and chat and we look forward to further developing our relationship over the coming years.

Those interested in the solutions deployed through the above hospitals, click here!

Prison Officers At Risk

It is no secret that prison officers operate in dangerous environments and are placed in life-threatening situations in the blink of an eye. It is also no secret that not enough is done to protect these officers.

In January 2012, Fulham Prison was the site of a riot involving prisoners armed with gym equipment, iron bars and other tools. In 2011, Risdon Prison in Tasmania fell victim to similar circumstances. Unfortunately these situations continue to arise and prison officers must be protected. In fact, it can often take a crucible event such as this for management to take note of and act on security measures.

Integrated Wireless provide alarm management solutions where duress alarms can be raised one of four ways:

1. Push-button
2. No-movement
3. Man-down
4. Pull-cord

Our solutions will also monitor the time taken by staff members to travel between location points on a pre-defined route to indicate whether a staff member's routine has been interrupted. The result of said situations will be time and date stamped for post-incident reporting.

For those interested in preventative management and staff protection solutions, click here!

Nurses Fear for Safety

In December 2011, mentally ill 12-18 year olds were due to move from Footscray into a new psychiatric ward as part of a $1 billion facility upgrade at the Royal Children's Hospital (RCH), Melbourne.

Shortly before the move the nursing staff concluded the ward to be unsafe and felt they could and would not work in a potentially dangerous environment. An article by The Age states, “They [nurses] claim security staff has been halved and personal panic alarms do not work, potentially putting nurses at risk when trying to restrain violent adolescents”.

The 16-bed Banksia ward was designed under the “least restrictive environment” approach, as specified by the Victorian Mental Health Act, taking away lock-up enclosures to avoid imitating a prison. As patients saw this as a positive, nurses immediately saw the potential danger associated with the plan and demanded a safe working environment with active duress alarms before moving into the ward.

Integrated Wireless (IW) were given the opportunity to showcase to RCH our unique offering currently in place at Dandenong Hospital. Based on the success reached there and throughout many sites Australia-wide, RCH awarded IW the business. After putting in place an Ekahau RTLS tracking system with to-the-second updates and Ascom i62 handheld devices with duress functionality, the nursing staff felt at ease and the move was complete early 2012.

The Royal Children's Hospital now have over 600 i62 handsets throughout the hospital and our ongoing support should any problems arise.

Click here for a complete list of products and services.

Student Security

Integrated Wireless (IW) attended the 4^th Annual Campus and Student Security Conference late May which provided a great opportunity to network with security representatives and general management from the education sector throughout APAC.

Student security is a growing concern throughout Australia, particularly in multi-building campus environments where facilities can often spread over streets and in some cases whole suburbs. Many universities, for example, comprise of multiple campuses that can be well over an hour from one another. The question remains- how can management successfully communicate to a wide audience both on and off campus in an emergency situation?

This question was posed multiple times throughout the conference and is a problem faced by many. IW specialise in mass-communications to better communicate with stakeholders in lock-down and evacuation situations. We understand the need to not only deal with the situation at hand, but log every detail for post-incident reporting. We also understand budgetary contraints and therefore integrate with existing infrastructure and 3^rd party systems (fire panels, EWIS systems, etc.) rather than force an unnecessary replacement of investments.

With successful deployments Australia-wide and knowledge from challenges overcome to date, IW were able to discuss in depth solutions to suit potential client requirements and have been given the opportunity for further review in coming weeks.

Click here for more information and contact details.