The VC Team helped in changing the way patients are being handed over in the Emergency Care Centre within NHS Grampian. H@N (Hospital at Night) Medical Handover takes place at 21:00 each night, where day teams verbally handover and discuss patients who are identified as unwell and require review overnight. Prior to Covid-19, the handover took place with both day and night Teams of medical staff from all wards meeting together in one large room.
When Covid-19 guidelines were introduced, the day team doctors were asked to form a socially distanced queue outside the H@N Handover room, then enter one at a time to deliver patient handover to the night team. Following further review, the Team sought to further reduce potential risk for infection and introduced Virtual Handover.
Transition to Virtual Handover required some additional equipment to be put in place to allow successful video conferencing (VC). The key role in this project is played by a dedicated VC codec with integrated camera, speakers and microphone array (picture below). The codec is connected to a 65’’ TV and it is all mounted on an adjustable wall bracket. The VC camera uses a Speaker Tracker function, so it automatically focuses on a person/people actively talking, making it easier for remote sites to follow conversation while there are multiple people in the room. The codec uses an interoperability platform to link with MS Teams. It connects to the Teams meeting by dialling 10-digit number from the meeting invite, while Teams users just follow the link as they normally would (more info on the interop solution available here: 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.