Chapter 2 Rhetorical Activities (4)

Patient safety is a primary concern during a patient’s stay in a hospital. Ensuring that each patient is safely monitored to prevent unnecessary injuries resulting from falls is an expensive practice. Prior to the development of more technologically advanced solutions, the most logical resolution to ensuring patient safety has been to hire additional staff to physically monitor the patient in the room. The cost associated with hiring additional employees is counter-productive when analyzed on a larger scale. An alternative to additional staffing for hospitals is to install a video monitoring system. Video cameras provide a centralized and focused set of eyes for constant patient observation. Monitoring creates an added sense of security and confidence for hospital staff, physicians, and families that their patients are being observed. Patient privacy would not be an issue because monitoring cameras are not designed to record, but are instead intended for uninterrupted monitoring. The monitoring would be no different than that of a sitter or other hospital employee being present in the patient’s room. The difference would be that one individual can oversee multiple rooms. Installing video cameras significantly increases patient safety and satisfaction. Patients can recover safely and quickly allowing families to remain confident that their loved ones’ needs are met with trained technicians monitoring the cameras day and night. A local hospital’s medical unit should invest in the use of video camera monitoring to improve quality outcomes regarding patient safety including reduction in falls and other risk situations.