H@N (Hospital at Night) Medical Handover takes place each evening, during which day teams verbally handover and discuss patients who are identified as requiring review overnight. To reduce the potential risk of infection a Virtual Handover was introduced.
The VC team installed additional equipment including a VC unit with speaker-tracking functionality, meaning it automatically focuses whoever is talking, making it easier for remote sites to follow the conversation when there are several people in the room.
The system makes use of an interop link to connect with MS Teams. See NVCS website for more info https://www.vc.scot.nhs.uk/book-a-bridge/vc-microsoft-teams-link/
Some of the benefits of “going virtual” include:
- reducing footfall within the Emergency Care Centre
- reducing potential of physical contact between day and night teams
- reducing potential of physical contact between individual departments
- on-call medical consultants at home can join handover meetings should they wish to attend