How does winter affect health care staff?
Like anyone else in the UK, staff working in the health care sector can often be hindered trying to get into their place of work by adverse weather conditions over the winter months. Whether this is snow or ice preventing their usual mode of travel, or minor illnesses like a cold stopping them from wanting to leave the warmth of their house and risk spreading a virus. Either way there will often be times when a member of staff might be unable or unwilling to leave their home, but still wishes to carry out their role remotely.
A 2022 article by The NHS Confederation showed that in winter 2021-2022 NHS staff absences spiked at nearly 90,000 in one week. Whilst not all of those staff would be able to carry out their job remotely, it might have been possible for many of them to continue with many of their daily tasks had they had access to the platforms they needed at home.
Ordinarily this would mean a significant decrease in productivity, as most staff will not have access to the hardware needed to scan their Smartcard at home an access the NHS spine. This means they are limited with the type of tasks they can carry out from home, preventing them from getting on with their potentially large workload.
These are problems that can often go on for days or possibly a couple of weeks in extreme cases, meaning staff could be working at a limited ability for some time without the right tools in place. This would be a problem at any time of year, but especially in the winter months when the number of people seeking medical assistance spikes.
So, what’s the answer? Health care organisations need a way to allow staff who would normally access the NHS spine via their physical Smartcards, a way to work without restriction from anywhere, at any time, and from any device.
Secure access to the NHS spine from anywhere
Advanced Virtual Smartcard is a cloud-based identity and access management solution. It provides secure and reliable access to the NHS spine to clinicians and staff, on any device at any time, without the need for any physical hardware.
By allowing staff members to securely access the NHS spine from anywhere, without the need of hardware, you are enabling them to work to full capacity even when they are unable to get into their usual place of work.
Examples of the type of people who would use this and the type of tasks they could carry out from home.
Although the ideal sicario might be that all staff are able to be onsite at all times, if this isn’t possible it is much better to have staff working remotely with access to the information they need, than not at all.
Get in touch with a member of our team today to find out how Advanced Virtual Smartcard can help your staff members work to full capacity from anywhere, at any time, on any device.