Frequently Asked Questions

    The Call Ball does NOT make any audible indicator - that was done on purpose after we surveyed many clinicians and decided:

1) The Alarm Fatigue issue of adding to an already over stimulating environment was not a good move.  Additionally, we had a stack of alarm-fatigue articles that recommend minimizing audible alarms in the ED, hallways, and other clinical settings to only have the most necessary alarms

2) The issue of sleeping in the hallway overnight (which is already difficult to do) would be made worse by having another sound added to the mix.  

3) All of the nurses in our trial setting have a Line-of-Sight on the hallway patients they are assigned.  This is common to most settings where hallways are used to house patients.  The glow of the blue light was enough of a cue to know that a patient is seeking staff assist.

4)   The Line-of-Sight aspect is also true for those Emergency rooms that use large open rooms to house overflow (that is being done as an alternative to hallway locations at a number of hospitals with this problem).  It is also true for open bay Military Combat Support Hospitals or FEMA pop-up settings where there is an 'open-bay ward' setup.