Virtual nurses come in handy at East Lancashire hospitals

1:57pm Friday 31st August 2012 in News Photograph of the Author By Catherine Pye, Health reporter

HYGENE The virtual nurse HYGENE The virtual nurse

‘VIRTUAL nurses’ will soon be doing their rounds at Blackburn and Burnley hospitals.

The East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust (ELHT) has decided to install moving and talking hologram images of real nurses in the entrances, as a way of reminding patients, staff and visitors to clean their hands as part of a crackdown on infections such as MRSA.

The hologram will be produced by reflecting high definition video projectors on to a specially developed material to give a clear image.

The nurse’s lips will be synched into the words he or she is saying, and they can be changed to relay different information.

Duncan Gavan, director of Infection, Prevention & Control (DIPC) for the Trust, said: “The virtual nurses will be attached to gel dispensers, so it’s a case of ‘you can’t pass go’ without using some gel.

“The nurses can give direct messages, and the message can change from week to week.

“Often you can walk past information without noticing it, but if the message changes, you don’t become accustomed.

“We hope to have two of them, one in Blackburn and one in Burnley, and if it’s successful, we can roll it out to more locations.”

He added: “The company have got the order.

“Now we need to find out if anybody in the trust wants to be the nurse. They would be videoed reading the script.”

The ‘virtual nurses’ have been trialled at the University College London Hospitals Foundation Trust.

Initial results showed that the number of visitors using sanitiser placed at the entrance to the hospital increased from 2.1 per cent to 33 per cent when the virtual nurse was switched on.

It is hoped that sponsors can be found for some of the virtual nurse messages as an income stream.

Comments (11)

3:34pm Fri 31 Aug 12

mavrick says...

Ubelieveable.
Ubelieveable. mavrick

3:34pm Fri 31 Aug 12

kateash says...

Dr Ron Cutler, senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London and an expert in infection control, says
" sanitisers state that they kill 99.9% of germs, but the difficulty is that the data was done on inanimate surfaces, and they don't replicate what happens on the human hand," he says. And the human hand is different because "you have flora on your hand that lives there and interacts with other bugs on your hand". And these percentages may not actually be so impressive. "My take, as a bacteriologist, is that 99.9% is nothing when you consider that organisms live in communities of 10 hundred billion; that 0.1% can mean a lot of bacteria!"
While part of an infection team at a hospital we were told that having these gel dispensers outside the wards looks good!! It reasures visitors and patients that something is being done by the Trust!
So why are we wasting this money on "virtual nurses" when it is real nurses on the ward that we need!!
Dr Ron Cutler, senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London and an expert in infection control, says " sanitisers state that they kill 99.9% of germs, but the difficulty is that the data was done on inanimate surfaces, and they don't replicate what happens on the human hand," he says. And the human hand is different because "you have flora on your hand that lives there and interacts with other bugs on your hand". And these percentages may not actually be so impressive. "My take, as a bacteriologist, is that 99.9% is nothing when you consider that organisms live in communities of 10 hundred billion; that 0.1% can mean a lot of bacteria!" While part of an infection team at a hospital we were told that having these gel dispensers outside the wards looks good!! It reasures visitors and patients that something is being done by the Trust! So why are we wasting this money on "virtual nurses" when it is real nurses on the ward that we need!! kateash

3:36pm Fri 31 Aug 12

Izanears says...

Probably next it will be virtual doctors appointments, then virtual ambulances taking you to a virtual hospital for a virtual operation, after which you will lie in a virtual bed eating virtual food!
Probably next it will be virtual doctors appointments, then virtual ambulances taking you to a virtual hospital for a virtual operation, after which you will lie in a virtual bed eating virtual food! Izanears

4:33pm Fri 31 Aug 12

Saywhatyoysee says...

Holy smoke whatever next ? We've got 'virtual wards, and virtual nurses' - I've thought I'd heard it all from this shambles of a hospital - its about time GP's got a grip - mind you when they start being in charge of commissioning on the 1st April I've no doubt they'll be conspicuous by their absence too & replaced by virtual GP's..... god help us.
Holy smoke whatever next ? We've got 'virtual wards, and virtual nurses' - I've thought I'd heard it all from this shambles of a hospital - its about time GP's got a grip - mind you when they start being in charge of commissioning on the 1st April I've no doubt they'll be conspicuous by their absence too & replaced by virtual GP's..... god help us. Saywhatyoysee

4:56pm Fri 31 Aug 12

Stuart Farquar says...

Can we ave virtual MP's and Councillors ? And would we actually notice any difference if we did ?
Can we ave virtual MP's and Councillors ? And would we actually notice any difference if we did ? Stuart Farquar

5:26pm Fri 31 Aug 12

woolywords says...

Does the virtual nurse come equipped with a multi-lingual setting, so that those who use water instead of toilet tissue, can be made aware of the dispensers?
Does the virtual nurse come equipped with a multi-lingual setting, so that those who use water instead of toilet tissue, can be made aware of the dispensers? woolywords

5:38pm Fri 31 Aug 12

Stuart Farquar says...

woolywords wrote:
Does the virtual nurse come equipped with a multi-lingual setting, so that those who use water instead of toilet tissue, can be made aware of the dispensers?
No chance of that I'm afraid wooly, mind you it will require a human to program her speech synthesis patterns. So she may end up jabbering in Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi and Balochi or Urdu LOOL
[quote][p][bold]woolywords[/bold] wrote: Does the virtual nurse come equipped with a multi-lingual setting, so that those who use water instead of toilet tissue, can be made aware of the dispensers?[/p][/quote]No chance of that I'm afraid wooly, mind you it will require a human to program her speech synthesis patterns. So she may end up jabbering in Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi and Balochi or Urdu LOOL Stuart Farquar

7:00am Sat 1 Sep 12

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9:20am Sat 1 Sep 12

BritainfortheBritish says...

Stuart Farquar wrote:
woolywords wrote:
Does the virtual nurse come equipped with a multi-lingual setting, so that those who use water instead of toilet tissue, can be made aware of the dispensers?
No chance of that I'm afraid wooly, mind you it will require a human to program her speech synthesis patterns. So she may end up jabbering in Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi and Balochi or Urdu LOOL
Should be English only and that goes for everything in this country .
[quote][p][bold]Stuart Farquar[/bold] wrote: [quote][p][bold]woolywords[/bold] wrote: Does the virtual nurse come equipped with a multi-lingual setting, so that those who use water instead of toilet tissue, can be made aware of the dispensers?[/p][/quote]No chance of that I'm afraid wooly, mind you it will require a human to program her speech synthesis patterns. So she may end up jabbering in Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi and Balochi or Urdu LOOL[/p][/quote]Should be English only and that goes for everything in this country . BritainfortheBritish

9:38am Sun 2 Sep 12

Chris P Bacon says...

BritainfortheBritish wrote:
Stuart Farquar wrote:
woolywords wrote:
Does the virtual nurse come equipped with a multi-lingual setting, so that those who use water instead of toilet tissue, can be made aware of the dispensers?
No chance of that I'm afraid wooly, mind you it will require a human to program her speech synthesis patterns. So she may end up jabbering in Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi and Balochi or Urdu LOOL
Should be English only and that goes for everything in this country .
The usual know-nowt ignorance from BftB there. So should you ever require emergency life-saving treatment, I trust you will refuse it if the person coming to provide it was born outside of our sceptr'd isle?

And they're not bad at all. Last week, one of them gave me a wirtual vank.
[quote][p][bold]BritainfortheBritish[/bold] wrote: [quote][p][bold]Stuart Farquar[/bold] wrote: [quote][p][bold]woolywords[/bold] wrote: Does the virtual nurse come equipped with a multi-lingual setting, so that those who use water instead of toilet tissue, can be made aware of the dispensers?[/p][/quote]No chance of that I'm afraid wooly, mind you it will require a human to program her speech synthesis patterns. So she may end up jabbering in Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi and Balochi or Urdu LOOL[/p][/quote]Should be English only and that goes for everything in this country .[/p][/quote]The usual know-nowt ignorance from BftB there. So should you ever require emergency life-saving treatment, I trust you will refuse it if the person coming to provide it was born outside of our sceptr'd isle? And they're not bad at all. Last week, one of them gave me a wirtual vank. Chris P Bacon

5:01pm Tue 4 Sep 12

Elegant1 says...

Chris P Bacon wrote:
BritainfortheBritish wrote:
Stuart Farquar wrote:
woolywords wrote:
Does the virtual nurse come equipped with a multi-lingual setting, so that those who use water instead of toilet tissue, can be made aware of the dispensers?
No chance of that I'm afraid wooly, mind you it will require a human to program her speech synthesis patterns. So she may end up jabbering in Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi and Balochi or Urdu LOOL
Should be English only and that goes for everything in this country .
The usual know-nowt ignorance from BftB there. So should you ever require emergency life-saving treatment, I trust you will refuse it if the person coming to provide it was born outside of our sceptr'd isle?

And they're not bad at all. Last week, one of them gave me a wirtual vank.
Mmm! Accusing one of "Ignorance" and then using it yourself! Not nice! Remember when you point the finger there are usually three pointing back at yourself!
[quote][p][bold]Chris P Bacon[/bold] wrote: [quote][p][bold]BritainfortheBritish[/bold] wrote: [quote][p][bold]Stuart Farquar[/bold] wrote: [quote][p][bold]woolywords[/bold] wrote: Does the virtual nurse come equipped with a multi-lingual setting, so that those who use water instead of toilet tissue, can be made aware of the dispensers?[/p][/quote]No chance of that I'm afraid wooly, mind you it will require a human to program her speech synthesis patterns. So she may end up jabbering in Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi and Balochi or Urdu LOOL[/p][/quote]Should be English only and that goes for everything in this country .[/p][/quote]The usual know-nowt ignorance from BftB there. So should you ever require emergency life-saving treatment, I trust you will refuse it if the person coming to provide it was born outside of our sceptr'd isle? And they're not bad at all. Last week, one of them gave me a wirtual vank.[/p][/quote]Mmm! Accusing one of "Ignorance" and then using it yourself! Not nice! Remember when you point the finger there are usually three pointing back at yourself! Elegant1

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