4 Benefits of Audio for Healthcare Professionals

Deploying audio monitoring solutions in healthcare facilities can yield substantial benefits for the health professionals working there. The reasons are quite simple: 

1. Conflict Resolution 

Audio recordings can be reviewed to resolve verbal conflicts between patients and healthcare administrators and receptionists. While human memory can sometimes be fuzzy and flawed, audio provides a verbal record of what happened.  

2. Helpful Validation 

Audio recordings can also be used to verify tests and provide data. This results in more accurate diagnoses for sleep physicians and speech therapists, by providing an aural record for doctors and therapists to refer back to.

3. Averting Aggression: Early Detection, Better Protection

Aggression detectors alert security personnel of patients who may pose a threat, without nurses having to press a button. Aggression detection analytics can be added to microphones to identify stressed voices or rising anger, enabling rapid response to escalating situations and alerting hospital staff quickly if a patient starts exhibiting aggressive behavior. This results in earlier (and safer) intervention, before any violent acts occur.

4. Easy and Safe Communication with Patients

Nurses often face situations requiring hands-free two-way communication with patients, especially when they cannot occupy the same space (such as when patients carry a contagious virus). Audio technology is the answer, enabling staff to speak quickly and easily with patients. At nursing and technician stations, two-way audio systems let personnel communicate with patients by pressing a button, and patients can provide hands-free responses.

During the 2014 outbreak of the Ebola virus, U.S. hospitals had to quickly increase their safety measures. One New York hospital needed a system to let nurses safely communicate with Ebola patients, or anyone being prepped to go into a patient’s room. In order for the hospital to properly prepare for a deadly-virus scenario, they had to quickly set up a system to accommodate the needs and precautions required in treating Ebola patients.

The hospital employed an advanced audio solution from Louroe Electronics: an audio base unit at the nurses’ station, plus speaker/microphone units on two patient room ceilings. The speaker/mic units allowed nurses to listen in 24/7, and they could speak with a patient by pressing the talkback button on their base station. Patients heard and talked to nurses via their rooms’ speaker microphones.

Carl Schroeder, Director of Electronics at Suffolk Lock & Security Professionals, felt strongly that audio must be part of the security solution in hospital settings. “In this situation, it’s imperative to have audio for the nurses to be able to speak to the patients while safely keeping them contained in their designated unit.” According to Schroeder, “Louroe’s technology was part of the answer.”

These are just 4 reasons of many why audio monitoring solutions in healthcare are necessary.