Monitoring ambient temperature in healthcare settings
Monitoring ambient temperature in healthcare settings can make a big difference for keeping medicine safe to use. Some examples of organisations that can find great value in ambient temperature monitoring:
- NHS Trusts
- Care homes or other residential services
- General Practice
- Community hospitals
Ambient temperature affects safety of medicine
Monitoring the temperature of different rooms inside healthcare settings can be difficult in combination with other responsibilities. A task as such is often at the bottom of the priority list for healthcare staff. That said, failing to maintain the right temperature can seriously impact medicine safety. To keep medicine safe to use the room temperature is recommended to be 25 °C or less.
Recording ambient temperature on a regular basis allows you to see how temperature fluctuates over time and spot any weaknesses in storage facilities.
Automatic recording of ambient temperature
Doing manual checks takes up a great amount of time. To record the temperature (minimum, maximum and current) of each measuring point would take a dedicated healthcare professional approximately three minutes every day. At a trust with potentially 100 different rooms that have medicine stored, you’d require 300 minutes or 5 hours each day simply to record temperature.
Automatic temperature monitoring can help in this space. Temp Tracker is a solution that does the job for nurses and other healthcare staff in monitoring temperature. The system records the temperature and a dedicated person gets alerts when the ambient temperature goes out of range. Reports give insight and allow you to see fluctuations over time.
Proof to take action and improve quality
One of the benefits of being able to see the temperature of a room within a trust over time, is having full insight into the safety of the medicine involving the temperature they’re being kept at. With this insight quality professionals within trusts and other healthcare organisations can make informed decisions.
For example a room temperature is below 25 °C during autumn and winter months, but starts going up during the summer months. Temperatures of above 25°C are recorded. This data insight means a patient safety nurse or quality professional can take action based on actual proof and make a business case for installing air conditioning in specific rooms.
If you’re looking to explore temperature monitoring for healthcare further, you may wish to read on temperature monitoring for medicine fridges.