Baby monitors help monitor patients in isolation

HAMILTON, ON – A cordless phone manufacturer has donated 70 baby monitors to Hamilton intensive care units and emergency rooms last month to help bridge the communication gap between healthcare staff and COVID-19 patients in isolation.

VTech Technologies Canada says it’s donated more than 550 monitors to healthcare facilities across Canada. The monitors are being used in negative pressure rooms where limited staff can tend to isolated patients.

“Some hospitals don’t have an intercom system and are currently using white boards or pen and paper stuck to windows to communicate with runners outside the isolation rooms,” said Vincci Lau, a company spokesperson. “The use of baby monitors allows the ICU the unique ability to safely see and communicate into the rooms.”

Rino Martino (pictured), VTech’s national account manager, said the company was first made aware of a need in Hamilton after an old colleague reached out. The colleague’s sister, an ICU nurse at the Juravinski Hospital, said the monitors would help staff hear life-saving alarms in COVID-19 isolation rooms.

“Because those rooms are soundproof, the monitors minimize the number of times staff must enter and leave the room, and also conserved the use of valuable PPE,” Martino said. “We saw this as the least we could do.”

VTech donated 20 baby monitors to Juravinski’s ICU and 10 to its ER. It later donated 20 to the Hamilton Health Sciences’ pediatric ICU, 10 to the Hamilton General Hospital ER, and another 10 to St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton.