Improving Patient Safety & Care 2020 - Partner Profile - Calla

Who are Calla?

Calla is the small camera that makes a big difference to healthcare professionals. We were born out of Reveal, who provide 75% of UK Police with body cameras and have been the market leader of body worn video to police and security for over 10 years. Calla was designed specifically for the healthcare industry from the ground up but leveraging the expertise and heritage of Reveal.

How has Calla improved patient safety and care across the health sector?

Calla has been proven in 2 research papers to reduce aggression and violence towards staff and improve patient safety by reducing the requirement to restrain patients.

Staff and patients feel more confident that the care that is being administered is of a high quality, and that complaints can be dealt with quickly and fairly.

Nursing staff at NHFT left the following feedback:

“I think it prevents lots of aggression and puts patients’ minds at ease knowing there is a record of what happened.”

“I have seen a few occasions where the incident had deescalated and believe this to have been helped by the camera being turned on.”

“I am fully in support of the technology being used permanently in the future."

"I can see nothing but positives from it with recourse to its potential in reducing/ deescalating violent incidents.”

“Initially sceptical, however can see that body worn cameras have had a positive impact on both patients and staff.”

What has been your greatest achievement to date? And were there any measurable outcomes that accompanied this achievement?

West London Trust (WLT) have advanced research by conducting their own study to look at some of the implications of the technology, which is available today via open access.

Key findings:

· BWC use was associated with a significant reduction in the seriousness of incidents on local services admissions wards.

· There was a significant decline in the use of tranquilising injections during restraint incidents.

· BWCs were associated with a reduction in the overall seriousness of aggression and violence in reported incidents

The conclusion is therefore that their use is beneficial to patients, mental health staff and managers.

Furthermore, staff surveys also revealed an overwhelmingly positive adoption of the cameras.

· 80% thought that BWCs would have a positive impact

· 86% thought that BWCs would help reassure both staff and patients

· 100% of staff had encountered instances of verbal or physical aggression at least once a week

· 87% spent a ‘considerable portion of their time dealing with aggressive behaviour’

· 80% said that dealing with aggressive behaviour ‘often gets in the way of doing the job they ought/want to be doing’

· 80% said that if BWCs could help reduce aggressive behaviour or the time spent dealing with it, ‘it would have a positive impact on their day-to-day job’.

· 60% could recall a work incident ‘where they wished they’d had a body camera’

Stephanie Bridger, Director of nursing and patient experience at WLT said: “The pilot provided us with really useful data which supported the use of body worn cameras on our inpatient wards. The data showed that the cameras helped reduce serious incidents and modified behaviour in a positive way, for both staff and patients. This has been a great innovation for us and we will be rolling this out across our Trust.”

How many organisations/clients currently utilise the service/solution across the UK?

We are engaged with approximately 50% of NHS Trusts in the UK, and would love to be introduced to the remaining 50%.

We are also working with Private Healthcare, Education, Entertainment and Retail organisations.