One of the greatest benefits that is often overlooked in a Vocera implementation is nurse call integration. Allowing patient calls to be directed to the appropriate caregiver (either with or without a unit administrator triaging the call) in real time and then allowing that caregiver to call back to the room to understand what the real need is can be a real time saver. This certainly is better than responding to a generic call and walking to the room, only to learn that the patient’s needs are something that can be resolved by perhaps a nurse’s aide or tech.

A barrier to implementing nursecall integration is the administrative task of assigning caregivers to rooms. If at every shift, the charge nurse needed to go to a computer and assign each bed to a nurse, this is probably a task that would be a challenging  to maintain.

A simpler way  for assignments in Vocera is by creating dynamic roles within Vocera that are the rooms themselves. In this manner, when a nurse logs on to Vocera, she can then verbally add herself to the rooms she is assigned. Other roles or groups that would receive patient call messages can be statically assigned or inherited upon login. Things like Code Blue or Staff Assist, can be groups that are predetermined and inherited on login.

So, when looking at Vocera it’s helpful to realize that bed assignment for nurse call integration can be made simply by a verbal command.