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At the University Hospital Northern Norway in Tromsø, around 4,500 employees are working to save lives and care for their patients. Innovative healthcare technology from Ascom has helped to make the workday of healthcare professionals more efficient, and has allowed for better monitoring of each patient.
“The most important thing for me in the workday is giving my patients the help they need. When I finish work, I want to be sure that the patients have had a good day and that they’ve had the monitoring they deserve,” says Evelinn Elvagjeng.
Evelinn is a nurse on the Gynecology/Urology/Endocrinology/Plastic Surgery ward at the University Hospital Northern Norway. Since August 2018, the ward, which has 28 beds, has been part of a pilot project aimed at testing Ascom’s innovative healthcare technology. The results have been only positive.
“Before we got the Ascom system, we had up to 400 alarm notifications every day and all the nurses on the ward were notified each time an alarm went off. This created enormous pressure and a work environment that was sometimes very demanding. Now we primarily get alarms related to our area of responsibility. And if, contrary to expectation, a nurse does not have the time or chance to follow it up, the alarm notification goes to the next person,” explains Elvagjeng, emphasizing that it makes the nurses much more observant of the alarm notifications they get.
Systems that facilitate service
Hege Bekkelund Moe is a member of the ward’s adminstration staff. She has many years of experience in the healthcare sector. One of Moe’s primary tasks is dealing with patient inquiries. The introduction of the Ascom system has radically changed her workday.
“The phones used to ring and ring. When I got a patient inquiry, the person had to be put through to the group manager in the relevant department, who in turn had to be put through to the nurse responsible for the patient concerned. Communication was very convoluted and exhausting for those involved,” recalls Moe. The new system gives her a complete overview of who is in charge of the various wards and she can put inquiries directly through to the nurses.
“It’s incredible how much more efficient it is. In a busy department like this, we depend on everything running smoothly. Some days we have up to 50 patients on the ward, and without an efficient system it leads to chaos,” says Moe.