Contextualising residents’ calls for staff assistance: A prototype web-based call-bell system in residential aged care facility

Which one of the three caregiving activities, namely, making a cup of tea for Mrs Smith, lifting Mr Light from floor, or attending to a bedbound resident, Mrs Bailey, with high body temperature, needs to be
prioritised if you work as a care staff in an aged care facility? If you think the answer is obvious, imagine making the same decision out of three room numbers shown on your deck phone. What if Mr Light is out of his room, and Mrs Bailey does not know how to use call-bell? Without the aid of specific, individual and contextual information, such as the real-time location, situation (e.g. having fall) and bodily condition (e.g. abnormal body temperature) of the resident, staff prioritising of care tasks and responding to emergencies become a stressful challenge. This study is to address such a challenge by developing a prototype web -based call-bell system capable of collecting, transmitting and displaying the individual and contextual information of the residents with/without the resident activating the call-bell. Staff performance in term of response time to residents’ calls and emergencies can be improved when the residents’ callbells are contextualised and the unrecognised needs of residents for staff assistance are detected. Using the eLabtronics Inventor’s kit and Wi-Fi chip, the Care on the Go WristBell is at this stage made and tested as a prototype wearable nursing call-bell specially designed for mobile and fragile residents. An alarm can be activated by an accelerometer (fall), a thermometer (detecting high/low body temperature), or a push-button. Staff will be alerted by a buzzer and a flashing dot on the webpage using either desktop/laptop in the nurse station or portable devices such as smartphone or iPad. The next stage objective is to show the real-time location of the resident on the webpage when the alarm is activated.