Medical Malpractice

Standalone versus Synchronized Hospitals Clocks

A good example of a standalone hospital clock is the clock that an employee may purchase from a department store. They are normally battery operated and run on their own internal quartz mechanism. They originally receive their accurate time from an employee reaching behind the clock and turning the hands to match the time they may have on their wristwatch or another clock in the building. This antiquated way of displaying time for the entire hospital can have some negative effects on how everything operates within the building. For example, when the standalone clocks start to drift from the time the employee set them to months before, displays start to differentiate. One clock may display a time five minutes different then another. At this point, employees could be making inaccurate patient records, dispersing medication at the wrong time, or showing up late to the operating room for a scheduled surgery-potentially harming the patient and making the employee's job more difficult, and even posing the threat of a lawsuit.

How Synchronized Clocks Work

A synchronized hospital clock, however, avoids all of these issues. Instead of having an employee set the time, synchronized hospital clocks calibrate and synchronize with the accurate time from a master clock. The master clock, which is the central point of the system, distributes accurate time from either a GPS receiver or NTP server out to each clock in the building, making sure that every time display is accurate and consistent with the rest. With this technology, the employees can move from room to room and floor to floor with completely matching time displays everywhere they go. Patient records will be accurately kept, medication will be delivered on schedule, and employees will be where they need to be on time, every time.

Clock Systems Reduce Discrepancies

With the disparity between the standalone hospital clock solution and the synchronized hospital clock solution, all hospital employees, managers, and even patients should be aware of the need for accurate time, and the negative effects brought on the hospital without it. Discrepancies in record keeping, or medication delivered off schedule and other detriments from unsynchronized time harms the patients as well as the employees on many levels. Additionally, these discrepancies can be useful to a prosecutor if the patient decides to file a lawsuit against the hospital for malpractice. If you have not yet heard of synchronized time, or your hospital is still using outdated ways of telling time with standalone hospital clocks, don't hesitate to make the switch to a synchronized solution. The hospital, as well as all people within the organization, will benefit from it.