Are You Looking Out For the Lone Worker?
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/13619322200400030 |
| Date | 01 September 2004 |
| Published date | 01 September 2004 |
| Pages | 33-34 |
| Author | John Wood |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care |
The Mental Health Review Volume 9 Issue 3 September 2004 ©Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) 2004 33
Are You Looking Out For
the Lone Worker?
John Wood
Commercial Director, C3 Ltd
ow safe are your staff who work alone
in the community? If someone were in a dangerous
situation would they have any way of calling for help?
And if they did not return from an appointment, how
long would it be before anyone noticed they were
missing? This is something that might one day come to
your attention in a way you would rather it did not.
A survey carried out by the Commission for Health
Improvement (CHI, 2004) found that almost one in six
NHS staff had experienced physical violence at work in
the last year, mostly from patients. Staff most at risk are
those who work alone in the community and mental
health staff are the most at risk of all.
It is surprising, then, that many health managers
appear to take a head-in-the-sand approach to lone-work
security, preferring not to think about it than face the
fact that their staff who work in the community may be
under-protected. Many incidents go unreported, so
many may be falsely reassuring themselves that the
worst is not going to happen. Cost, the complications of
putting a system in place and no one seeing it as their
particular responsibility are all barriers to something
being done to protect lone workers. But which cash-
strapped NHS trust wants a lawsuit on their hands? And
trusts do have a duty of care to their staff to have a lone-
worker policy in place. There is also pressure from the
top, with the government’s NHS zero tolerance
campaign urging NHS management to put violence
against staff at the top of their agenda.
Often it is not that a trust doesn’t have a lone worker
policy, but that staff are not aware of it. I have attended
meetings with trusts when a group of senior managers
have been uncertain as to whether they have a lone-
worker policy or not. And even if they do have a policy, a
document is not going to do much to help a worker
facing an armed and angry patient. When questioned on
the issue, most trusts, particularly mental health trusts,
know this is an issue they need to address but
unfortunately it is often very far down the list of
priorities.
If anything is going to encourage trusts to look at a
Hsolution for protecting lone workers it has got to be
something they can set in motion with the minimum of
fuss for both management and users. That was our
thinking behind the development of LookOut call,
which aims to be the practical side of the lone-worker
policy. We have developed it to be:
■simple to use
■easy to install
■flexible enough to meet the needs of any NHS
trust
■fully computerised, so there is no possibility of
human error.
We were well aware that cost, technophobia and worries
over how much time it would take to implement would
all be concerns, but some of the reasons managers gave
for wanting to introduce a solution to protect their lone
workers included:
■near misses, such as a lone worker having a gun
drawn on them
■more vulnerable situations for staff – for
example, crisis and home treatment teams
involve staff visiting unknown patients at any
time of night and day
■outside criticism: criticism in a CHI or HSE
report for not having a lone-worker policy or not
communicating the policy to staff.
So how does this practical solution to the lone-worker
policy work? LookOut is a computerised solution to
lone-worker safety that will raise the alarm in an
emergency. The worker communicates with the system
via a mobile phone, but the alarm will still be raised in
an emergency even if they are unable to get to the
phone. The system holds key information about the
individual such as mobile phone number, car registration
details and physical description. The system also
recognises the lone worker’s voice. Speed dials are set
up to allow the individual to communicate quickly what
they are doing. Each speed dial relates to a different
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