Ladies Who Answer The Lamp

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28987, 31 August 1959, Page 5 (Supplement)

Ladies Who Answer The Lamp

Nurses at Princess Margaret Hospital will be "ladies who answer the lamp." For the best possible service to patients, while at the same time causing the least disturbance, a system of warning lights has been installed in the wards. By every patient's bed there is an electric flex with a call button, which when pressed, causes four tiny red lamps to glow. One shines on an indicator panel in the ward sister's office above her desk. Another glows in the ward kitchen, where there is usually a nurse or other staff member at most times of the day or night. A third shows outside the door of ' the patient's room, while the fourth glows in the fitment above his bed-head. In this way, the nurse is directed immediately to the bedside of the patient who called her without other patients in a four-bed room having been disturbed. The lamp glows until the nurse has reached her patient's bedside and cancelled the call on his switch panel.