Security expert Abloy UK has supplied high security CLIQ cylinders and keys to Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to upgrade the security of the drug cabinets at Scunthorpe General Hospital, resulting in significant cost and time savings.
Like many hospitals across the UK, Scunthorpe General Hospital uses a traditional mechanical lock system to control its drug cabinets. Most wards generally have several cupboards and fridges with a different key for each and the ward manager/nurse in charge will have possession of these for the duration of their shift.
However, this not only means that a lot of nurses’ time is spent searching for who has the keys, but also time lost in trying to find out which key fits which lock, which may result in the scenario that patients are left waiting for medication.
The problem: the Trust needed to find a way of being able to make this process more streamlined and easier for nurses to access keys, while also saving time and costs. The answer – Abloy’s CLIQ Remote system.
Scunthorpe Hospital undertook a trial of Abloy’s electro-mechanical locking system on one of its wards. This involved specifying and supplying high-security cylinders and keys, which were fitted to all of the drug cabinets and cupboards as well as padlocks on fridges.
On top of this every nurse on the ward, including bank staff had their own key, which was individually programmed to allow them access to the cupboards they needed to use.
The CLIQ technology provided the hospital with added benefits such as easily being able to amend or delete access rights and collecting audit trails from the Abloy Cliq cylinders, coupled with the ability to easily delete lost or stolen keys from the system ensuring that security remained a priority.
Katie, ward manager at Scunthorpe Hospital comments: “Each nurse had their own key so there wasn’t any time wasted searching for the keys, and with you only having one key it was so simple and easy. As ward manager I would recommend it to all other wards and hospitals everywhere.”
Mike Urwin, Clinical Director of Pharmacy and Medicine Management at Scunthorpe Hospital, comments: “Throughout the trial of CLIQ Remote we undertook research to discover how much time was actually spent on nurses looking for keys, the results were astonishing.
“Typically a nurse will spend an average of 40 minutes per shift looking for keys, this equates to 250 minutes lost on a ward every day. Over a year, if this equation was used across the whole of our 51 wards, the lost time would be the equivalent of having an extra 24 nurses on duty every day across the whole Trust!
“My recommendation would be that the Trust should implement the use of the Abloy CLIQ Remote locking system as soon as possible to improve medicine security and increase nursing care through the time saved not looking for medicine cupboard keys. I would also recommend that all other Trusts think about implementing a trial of this system and see for themselves the benefits it can have.”