LIGHT SIGNALS IN HOSPITALS

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21206, 31 August 1940, Page 17 (Supplement)

LIGHT SIGNALS IN HOSPITALS

New System Saves Nurses

Miles of walking in the year will be saved nurses if the switchboard location light system is installed in the new King George V. Memorial Hospital for women and children. The system is at present being tried out in the isolation block at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, which will control the new hospital.

This system of lights to indicate every nurse’s whereabouts was evolved by Dr. Alan Lilley and the hospital architects. Dr Lilley recently returned to Sydney after a world tour of hospital inspection. The general idea of the scheme he saw overseas, but he and the architects have elaborated the system to its present high standard. How It Works The idea is this. The sister in charge of a block or a wing sits at her table with a telephone and a switchboard connected with every bed. If a patient requires attention, he pushes a bell. This shows on the indicator as a yellow light. The sister then picks up the telephone and speaks to the patient through a loud-speaker alongside the bed. Perhaps he wants to know when he can go home. In that case, the sister tells him over the phone and saves two trips—one there and one back. Perhaps he wants a drink of water. Then she looks on her switchboard, and sees that there is a nurse in the next ward. She then speaks to her through the loud-speaker, asking her to take a glass of water to the patient. This saves the nurse four trips—to see what the patient wants, to get it, to take it to him, and to return. As each nurse goes into a ward, she presses a switch which lights a red indicator outside the ward and a

red light on the sister’s switch indicator. When she leaves the ward she switches it off. Favoured by Staff and Patients If the sister requires a nurse immediately at her desk, she turns a switch on her telephone which buzzes until switched off, and which at the same time lights up an indicator in the passage with the word “nurse.” This same indicator in, the passage also shows at a glance' from which ward a patient is ringing. Nurses, patients, and doctors are all in favour of the system as it is working at present in the isolation block. Doctors find it labour-saving, too, as when they are making their rounds they can tell from the red light outside the ward just where a nurse is in attendance. Nurses like the idea, too, not only to save their feet, but for quick action. If they need a sister or a doctor urgently they can ring the patient’s bell and speak through the loud-speaker, without having to go outside the ward and becoming desterilised. When the red light system outside the rooms was first introduced to show that the patient required attention, the idea was hailed as “the last word.” This scheme, which is being tried out at Prince Alfred, makes the previous idea seem elementary.