Nesoddtunet Care Home is idyllically located at Nesodden outside Oslo in Norway, with a view over the Oslofjord to the west and glimpses of Oslo city centre to the north. The Care Home has over 300 employees and a total of 122 care home rooms spread over nine households and three buildings. They have both short-term places, accommodation for long-term residents and an offer for those with dementia and cognitive impairment.
A few years ago, Nesodden local authority carried out a survey of the needs in health and care. The central questions were: «What are the needs of the residents, staff and relatives, and how can we meet these needs?»
– In this process, we saw early on that we needed to do something with the nurse call system at Nesoddtunet Care Home. In particular, how we should improve patient safety by giving patients more and better opportunities to notify the staff, if necessary, says Stig Henning Morken, adviser and project manager in Nesodden local authority.
Like so many other care homes, Nesoddtunet also had a traditional nurse call system with pull cords by the beds and in the bathrooms, as well as some pull cords in common areas and an old-fashioned panel in the corridors. When resident needed assistance, they would pull the chord, prompting an alarm to go off in a nurse’s station and the staff had to rush to the resident.
– The obvious disadvantage of this system is that if something happens, the patient must be near a pull cord to be able to notify that he or she needs help. If one fell too far from the pull cord, the patient had a problem. There were also significant limitations in the supervision; the moment an employee left a room, it was impossible to know what happened in that room afterwards, explains Morken.
Sensio was the chosen solution
In 2022, Nesodden local authority decided to invest in a new patient notification system with digital supervision at Nesoddtunet Care Home. The welfare technology company Sensio won the tender.
– Sensio had the best product and was also the preferred choice of the employees. They came across as the most professional in everything from the user interface to the technology itself, says Stig Henning Morken.
Since then, the implementation of Sensio's products and solutions at the care home has proceeded successively from building C in November 2023, building B in February 2024 and building A in April 2024.
At Nesoddtunet, they have now introduced the resident notification system Sensio Care and the eHealth platform Sensio 365 and have installed the safety sensor RoomMate in all 122 patient rooms and the associated room panel. In connection with that, the employees use mobile work phones with Sensio Pocket for receiving and handling alarms, both from RoomMate, pull cords and removable alarm buttons in the rooms.
Good experiences with working digitally first
Konrad Dawda is a trained nurse and has worked at Nesoddtunet since 2007 and is now head of two departments at the care home. He is full of praise for Sensio's products and solutions.
– We are getting older, we are living longer and there are not so many of us who work in health and care. Sensio's products are good support for us to be able to deliver patient safety, and therefore something I strongly recommend, he says.
All employees at Nesoddtunet Care Home work according to the «digital first» method. This means that they receive the patient alarms in Sensio Pocket on the work phones they carry with them. Then, they consider first carrying out digital supervision and then whether there is a need for physical supervision.
Read more about digital transformation in elder care
Although working digitally first is completely new for Dawda and everyone at Nesoddtunet, he already has good experiences to share.
– My experience is that this has brought great benefits for the residents, the employees and the relatives. The biggest gain is clearly better resident safety. It gives us peace of mind to know that we now have a system where residents can notify the staff wherever they are and we can react and act quickly when someone needs help. Among other things, this has led to the employees having a calmer and more efficient workday and that the patients are even better looked after, he says.
The Head of Department particularly highlights the benefits for the night shifts.
– With RoomMate and digital supervision, we can reduce the number of physical supervisions and avoid disturbing the residents’ sleep unnecessarily. Via the activity report in RoomMate, one can also gain insight into the resident’s sleep pattern and detect any sleep problems. I would say that RoomMate is the night shift’s best friend.
Sees a big difference in patient safety
The safety sensor RoomMate automatically detects risk situations in the resident’s room, such as the resident having fallen, being in the bathroom too long or leaving the room. Based on individual settings for each resident, the alarm goes off and the employees are notified via Sensio Pocket on their work phones.
Ihor Turkevych, auxiliary nurse at Nesoddtunet Care Home, agrees that the working method with digital supervision has given good results.
– Digital supervision and RoomMate have given us a better overview and better control. By being able to carry out digital supervisions via Sensio Pocket, there is less stress, better workflow and we have more time to help the patients who need it most, he says.
Turkevych is also a super user of the Sensio system and contributes to the training of colleagues.
– Everything that is new takes time, but there has been a lot of commitment. We have seen a big difference in resident safety and are very satisfied, he says, and adds that he does not quite understand how they managed in the past without Sensio.
Better collaboration between the employees
Stig Henning Morken in Nesodden local authority confirms that there has been a lot of commitment and positivity around the introduction of Sensio's products and solutions.
– Working digitally for the first time is new and different for everyone at the care home. But there is no doubt that the combination of active notification, where the resident pulls a cord or presses an alarm button, and passive notification through various sensors where the notification goes directly to the care team, has contributed to raising resident safety significantly at Nesoddtunet, he says.
Another benefit is that the collaboration between the care team has improved a lot.
– One of the biggest effects of working digitally first is that the care team have been given a tool that enables them to work more cross-functionally and that they collaborate with the residents to a greater extent than before by notifying each other and asking for help. This also applies to the cooperation between the departments, and I think this will get even better with time, he says.
Morken thinks it is important to clarify that the main focus is still on the people who carry out the care work, but that the technology should support what is being done. He only sees this as the start of Nesoddtunet and the use of welfare technology.
– The revolutionary thing about welfare technology is that you have to work in a completely different way; turn the working form upside down. The technology is an important part of it, but it is how you utilise it that matters, he says, and highlights the solid collaboration with Sensio as a clear success factor.
Finally, Morken has a call for local authorities that have not yet tried Sensio's products and solutions.
– Talk to someone who uses it and try it yourself! It is easy to use, and you get started quickly. As long as you get the care team on board, it takes a lot not to succeed. I find that Sensio has a genuine interest in how the system is used, that it is used as much as possible and that the customers get the desired effect.
