Nemlia News – October 2023
It is quiet in the corridors of Villa del Sol, one of the facilities for people with severe dementia in the Mainterrasse care centre. The moonlight shines through the windows of the nurses’ room of the caregivers who are just starting their night shift. A room overview of the residents is displayed on their mobile phones and the ward computer.
“Everything’s relaxed,” says nurse Christine with a smile to her colleague Bernd, who is preparing the administration of medication for the next morning. But in one room her mobile phone reports movement outside the bed. “Someone seems to want to go wandering,” Christine remarks and makes her way to the resident.
She quietly opens the door and looks into the 89-year-old’s relieved face. Gently, she accompanies the elderly lady back to her bed, talks to her soothingly until she falls asleep peacefully again. Back in the nurses’ room, nurse Christine takes a coffee while her colleague Bernd briefly goes to another resident to accompany him to the toilet.
Christine looks out of the window with her coffee in her hand – how pleasant the night shifts have become since they have technological support. No more falls, no more hectic, no more chaos. Safety for the residents, targeted assignments for the staff and, above all, more time for real care.
The opportunity for improvement lies in the courage to change
What almost reads like wishful thinking in everyday nursing care has already become reality at Mainterrasse nursing centre. For the management Natalie Jellinghaus and the head of nursing services Katja Reinhardt, the advantages of technological support by Nemlia were quickly apparent: “First and foremost, it was the risk of our residents falling that we wanted to greatly reduce. With the conventional control rounds, it could happen that a resident was already lying on the floor for a while until a caregiver came to check. The sensors, on the other hand, detect the movements within seconds,” remembers care service manager Katja Reinhardt.
She has been working for Mainterrasse care centre for many years and knows the challenges: “The problem of demented people who are predominantly active at night exists in every nursing home. Since you don’t work with sleeping pills and fixation, it is in the nature of things that many dementia patients walk around at night because they have a partly disturbed day-night rhythm. This, of course, makes it exhausting and debilitating for the night shift. That makes it all the more helpful to have technology that alerts you to an unusual movement before a fall happens, because you can be right there.”
The good feeling of being understood and creating real relief
For the Mainterrasse care centre, the step towards technological support was a step towards greater security and relief. Thus began the cooperation with Nemlia, which, in addition to a mutual basis of trust, was characterised above all by personal contact. Especially when it comes to supportive technologies for a sensitive area like human care, humanity is enormously important in the entire implementation process.
For Katja Reinhardt, too, it was a successful start of the cooperation: “We had already talked about the use of Nemlia with our care team in advance and received a positive response. In addition, we were in close contact with our Nemlia account manager the whole time. On site, the Nemlia team then implemented everything wonderfully with us virtually in one go – the installation, the familiarisation, the function. Everything was easy to understand and intuitive to use.”
The management and nursing staff received a lot of positive feedback, especially from the night shifts, because in addition to the fact that there is no risk of falls, all residents can sleep more peacefully because the noise level of the doors opening and closing due to the constant checks has been eliminated. The residents as well as the nursing staff got through the nights more calmly and relaxed.
We do not replace human care, we facilitate it.
At the Mainterrasse care centre, they see a large part of the future of care in digitalisation, because it can already take over tasks such as documentation or monitoring. It is clear that smart technologies can already enable more humanity and care in nursing, by telling us where someone is really needed.
For Katja Reinhardt, it is clear that the staff shortage in the care sector will continue. At the same time, more and more people are getting older. And if humanity and care in nursing are to continue, then digitalisation is a real opportunity.
How can we make your night shifts safer and relieve your staff?
We contribute to care centers in order to give the residents and the employees a better quality of life. This is done by providing information that makes it possible for care providers to give the right care at the right time for each resident. In this way we help provide maximum overview for staff, better workflows and more time for genuine care.
Since every care situation is different, we will be happy to discuss the situation at your care center and discuss how we are already helping other care homes in a similar situation. We will be happy to adapt everything we know to your situation and discuss the variety of options in a personal meeting. Please feel free to contact us for further information or a non-binding meeting.
