The Sicilian Region, through the Department of Health, has been working for some time on the activities of addressing the Sicilian Health Authorities aimed at preventing acts of violence against health workers, increasingly frequent and recently occurred, unfortunately, also at the Piedmont Hospital of the IRCCS Bonino Pulejo.
On the occasion of yet another episode of violence which also involved a security guardthe strategic management of the IRCCS intervened by addressing the prefect Cosima Di Stani who, with great sensitivity, put the State Police, IRCCS Bonino Pulejo and the security firm KSM to work together and find suitable solutions to stem and contain the phenomenon.
On the prefect’s input, a first technical meeting had already taken place on May 8, coordinated by the Deputy Chief of Police Diego Trotta, with the participation of the General Director of the IRCCS Maurizio Lanza, the Head of the Administrative Department of the IRCCS Maria Felicita Crupi and the top management of KSM.
The effects of the collaboration were not long in coming and, already on 17 June, in the second meeting, the fruits of the agreement were reaped: the State Police has in fact promptly increased its daily passages in front of the hospital entrance, while the IRCCS has ordered an increase in surveillance on pre-holidays, holidays and night hours, also increasing the video surveillance points.
Furthermore, to make the Alert systems more effective and smart and the sending of immediate rescue requests to the KSM operations centre by healthcare operators, the fixed call points at the Piedmont Emergency Department have been increased and it has also been decided to equip all staff with personal mobile devices of call for which, in a few days, training sessions will take place.
An accurate preliminary report by KSM on risk mapping, commissioned by Bonino Pulejo, highlighted among other things that, often, some episodes of intolerance, always and in any case unacceptable, are also due to the lack of information that relatives have while waiting at the Emergency Room where they accompanied their relative. Following the aforementioned report, also in the aforementioned logic of humanization of care, the IRCCS offices, coordinated by the engineers Antonino Longo and Giovanni Lupo, worked to develop an app which, in strict compliance with the legislation on privacy and with the use of ad hoc credentials, by the end of the year, it will enable the companion to follow the relative’s process within the emergency room. This tool will be added to the systems already in use in the waiting rooms and to the information on emergency room crowding present on the Institute’s website.
Satisfaction for the path undertaken was expressed by the Deputy of the Police Commissioner Diego Trotta and by the General Director of the IRCCS Maurizio Lanza, not only for the ability to team up between Institutions, but also for the solutions found to protect workers, improving the dialogue between users and healthcare personnel and reducing communication distances, all aimed at producing a higher quality public service.