Changing from pagers to Cortex has the major impact of allowing for better communication and acknowledgement of receiving a notification - which in turn means the entire clinical and telephonist team are working together.
Here are some tips around using Cortex Emergency Notifications as effectively as possible.
- When you initially sign up to a shift role there is no default need to set an expiry time
- Until you manually sign out of the app you will remain attached to any non-expiring roles hence you will be (loudly) notified every time a call run sheet requests that shift role
- Roles can have an expiry time specified at any time, or be removed without needing sign out simply by tapping the “cog” icon beside the role
- There is no notification currently when a role expires
- If you manually sign out and sign back in then any non-expiring roles you have previously selected will re-activate
From the telephonists point of view - they have a view of all participants in the call - and have the additional responsibility of escalating calls if no acknowledgments are received. Here are the 3 main scenarios for them.
1. Green light - received and acknowledged notification.
Perfect!
2. Known clinician in role, but no response.
In this scenario the telephonist can see that a notification has been sent to a user, but they haven’t responded within 2 min of receiving. The telephonist will most likely contact the known user directly via the contact details they have provided in the settings view inside Cortex.
3. No clinician is signed into a requested role
This is the worst case scenario for the telephonists as they will immediately need to track down who was supposed to be in the role and then attempt to contact them.
Best Practice
- If you are rostered to a shift role then sign into Cortex and attach the role as soon as possible when your shift starts
- Add your contact number in Cortex's settings
- Try and acknowledge calls as soon as they come through