How Community Therapy Uses Duress for Safer Mobile Clinicians
What was the catalyst for considering Duress?
Community Therapy is a mobile health company providing services across New South Wales, Australia. As a mobile service provider, one of the primary risks for the business is the ‘lone worker’ risk.
This risk was identified through our certification process with the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Part of that process involved developing a robust risk management plan.
Safety of our staff is a priority for us, so we began looking into different options for safety monitoring.
Why did Community Therapy choose Duress over other solutions?
We pride ourselves on being an inclusive workplace with a very diverse workforce. As such, we knew our solution needed to be suitable for team members of different ages, backgrounds and IT capabilities.
This meant finding a solution that was ideally:
● Reliable
● User-friendly and easy for staff to adopt
● Appropriate for varying levels of confidence with technology
We trialled a range of different types of products. Most were apps, but we also trialled wearable options.
From the very beginning we found Duress very easy to use. Some of the key reasons we chose Duress included:
● It was wonderful to use from a software perspective
● Team feedback indicated that Duress had the best user experience
● Duress includes a wearable option as well as the app, meaning that it a holistic
and considered solution
● The Duress team provided excellent customer service from the outset; they
promptly and easily responded to all of our queries
What was involved in implementing Duress, how it was received?
Upon starting with Duress, we were provided access to a cloud-based administration login and added Community Therapy’s respective accounts.
Assigning a license to each employee is very straightforward. The user-friendly administration panel makes it very easy to buy more subscriptions or add more users as necessary.
For each individual user, signing onto the app and loading their details is exceptionally easy as well. This was one of the main reasons Duress was so well received by our staff – it is such a user-friendly system.
How did staff members react to new safety systems?
Many of our staff members have commented on how much they appreciate the safety and confidence that comes with having Duress.
One of our core values at Community Therapy is innovation, and it is very important to us that we are innovative in everything that we do. For us, partnering with Duress is an example of that.
Within the mobile healthcare industry, many organisations only have a very rudimentary system in place to protect their staff. Sometimes, this is as archaic as advising staff members to phone the office if they are feeling unsafe, or using a particular code word to convey their concern.
This kind of system leaves team members vulnerable. What if they cannot access their phone? What if they are not in a position to make a call?
That’s a vulnerability that we weren’t able to accept within our risk management plan, and so that’s where Duress has been invaluable.
How is Duress used in day-to-day operations?
Duress provides connection so that lone workers are not isolated.
When a team member is in a client’s household, for example, Duress provides a monitoring function. The team member turns on the app monitoring function before entering the home, and then turns it off when exiting the home.
This monitoring is conducted on all initial consultations or where the client, the suburb or the street has been identified as posing any risk to our clinicians.
What components of Duress support have you utilised?
Another wonderful feature about Duress is that it comes with additional support.
In the event that a staff member is feeling unsafe or uncomfortable, a notification is sent to Duress's monitoring team.
They will then follow up and phone our clinician to make sure that they're safe.
At the same time, our management team will receive real-time notifications regarding the situation. This includes a link with video and audio of what is going on.
How is Duress making a tangible difference to your staff’s wellbeing, culture and environment?
The big difference that Duress makes is that team members feel safe.
Staff feel confident because they have the option to monitor their presence and safety in the community.
Staff members are able to set a timer to cover the length of time they expect to be at a client’s home.
They also have access to more advanced features if they find themselves in a risky situation. This includes actions such as:
● Shaking their phone
● Ripping their earphones out of the phone
● Using the screen to urgently monitor and relay any problematic situations
Overall, these features lead to improved safety for isolated staff.
Do you have any feedback about Duress?
Our team members have reported feeling safer and more confident going about their work. They have reported:
● Feeling safer in known high-risk suburbs
● Feeling more confident walking into residential complexes
● Feeling safer walking back to their vehicle
● Feeling safer at the end of the day during winter, when it’s getting dark
Overall, we can see our team benefiting from the sense of safety and security that comes from knowing they've got Duress in their pocket.
What would you want to share with others about your investment in Duress?
We approached the engagement of Duress with due diligence, we took our time and looked at different options in the industry. After our analysis of the market, we simply found no better solution.
Our recommendation to anyone that must address lone worker risk is to trial Duress, work with their team and be made aware of the different options in the market.
Duress is proud to support the incredible work the teams at Community Therapy do everyday, learn more about the great work they do here.
