News & Opinions

Can technology nurse hospitals through change?
05 December 2007

An national on-line booking system for nurses makes sense for hospitals.

Hospitals no longer have to phone numerous nursing agencies to find nurses.
And from the nurses point of view belonging to fewer nursing agencies with a wider coverage of hospitals ensures that they optimise their options of obtaining agency "work" with minimum effort.
The hospital will be able to "search" for a nurse using pre-determined criteria and at the click of a button send "sms" shift requests to several nurses in seconds.Nurses on the other hand no longer have to answer a "ringing phone" especialy while they are working or sleeping.As soon as it is convienient for them they reply"yes" if they are available and simply ignore it if they are not.The hospital receives this reply and can immediatly generate a "confirmation "sms".The entire process takes seconds.Tracking records are generated for all requests and confirmations which ensures there are no misunderstandings.The hospital receives a booking confirmation schedule daily from CYBER NURSE before an invoice is generated.The system is intergrated with to a salary package which ensures nurses get paid timeously and accurately.

Cambrient software director Jarred Ciman agrees that this change in the normal procedure will require adequate explanation to nurses who need to understand the importance of the reply.All nurses receive precise instructions on how the system works before being signed on.

"Back in 2005,Ken Ford the originator of the project asked us if we could make the technology work" remembers Cinman.With so many cellphones out there it seemed that the only feasable solution lay in a two-way sms system generated from the internet with a national database which could be traceable to a specific booking and [we had to] make it as simple as possible."Sms technology was the secret to its sucess".


"When coming up with a technology concept like this, it's important to choose the right partner," says Ford.
"We wanted something simple for the hospitals, simple for the nurses and also simple for us to maintain. Cambrient's Contentsuite and SMS solutions really satisfied all those requirements."
Ford is convinced that SMS is the way to go, which has many benifits both to nurses and hospitals.

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