Having recently held our first Design Review Panel for behavioral health professionals from across the USA, it’s clear that collectively as a sector we are striving for better, day-by-day. The role of a ‘therapeutic space’ lays central to ongoing conversations around improving patient recovery journeys, and delivering innovative safety solutions that consider this – while reducing risk – is paramount.
Since our formation we’ve delivered over 10,000 risk-reducing projects for behavioral and psychiatric health facilities around the globe, and achieving a fine balance between robustness, safety, and calming aesthetics has played a fundamental role in our products gaining trust on a global scale. We seek to maximize each of these characteristics in every product we design and manufacture in order to advance design for behavioral health environments.
A study carried out in 2018 into the National Violent Death Reporting System and Sentinel Event databases found that hanging was the most common method of inpatient suicide in the United States, accounting for 70.5% of all inpatient suicide events. Of these suicides by hanging, over half (53.8%) used a door as a ligature point.
As experts in ligature resistant and anti-barricade design, we specialize in doorsets for behavioral health environments that are proven-to-perform in the toughest, most challenging facilities. Our door systems are designed to improve patient safety by reducing the possibility of the door being used as a ligature point, or a barrier to prevent staff entry, thus helping clinical staff prevent patient suicides.
Kingsway’s SWING DTM: improving patient safety in behavioral health
Leading the way for patient safety in behavioral health, our SWING DTM is a specialist anti-barricade door system with an integrated door top monitor (DTM) ligature alarm. The SWING DTM is designed to alert clinical teams to patient ligature attempts, allowing for swift clinical response to life-threatening incidents.
The SWING DTM is specifically designed for patient bedrooms and private areas to help staff prevent loss of life in their facilities, although it is equally adept when specified in communal spaces too, such as communal kitchens or education suites.
Its integrated ligature monitor is hardwired by design to ensure it provides the robustness and reliability demanded for an assistive clinical product within a life-critical system, helping to avoid signal interference and outages that can occur with wireless systems. The SWING DTM’s hardwired nature also avoids the need for frequent battery changes, a process that causes unnecessary disruption on wards and potential distress for patients, on top of being time-consuming for staff and costly for the facility.
To ensure the SWING DTM can serve as a truly-life saving piece of equipment, it is designed with anti-barricade capabilities at its core. The SWING DTM’s integrated door top monitor plays a critical role in preventing patient suicides, however, its purpose will be nullified if staff are unable to open the door when responding to a ligature alarm, such as if the patient has barricaded the door closed. In this situation, the SWING DTM’s anti-barricade capabilities can be the difference that’s required, allowing staff to open a barricaded door outwards, away from the barricade, in under 2 seconds.
Seamless integration with our smart ligature monitoring software
Following extensive research with our behavioral health partners, our SWING DTM doorset integrates seamlessly with our KOSMOS Smart Monitoring System. The KOSMOS system helps clinical teams monitor and respond to ligature incidents to help prevent loss of life in challenging environments. KOSMOS also provides invaluable data for future review by recording an audit trail of patient activity and staff observations. This data can help management teams review patient care quality and highlight key trends on wards, such as patients leaving their rooms at specific times during the night or remaining in their room more than usual.
Creating a therapeutic space for improved patient outcomes
With the topic of ‘therapeutic spaces’ remaining central to conversations around patient outcomes, at Kingsway Group we have developed an expertise in designing robust, durable, and safe products that offer a homely feel. Our SWING DTM doorset is no exception to this, with an extensive range of finishes to available to suit any given environment and hardware that offers unrivaled customization possibilities to contribute to creating calming, therapeutic space for patients.
Supporting behavioral health facilities, architects, and contractors
For those working within the behavioral health sector, there are tremendous pressures on time and resources, and with that the opportunities to explore new risk-reducing solutions in depth are limited. With the ability to prevent loss of life and support staff within behavioral health facilities, our specialist door systems are an invaluable investment and, given the significance of their purpose, we want our partners to be wholly sure in your understanding of their capabilities and functions.
Through 10,000 completed risk-reducing projects, the ‘Kingsway Difference’ has cemented our position as the door system of choice for behavioral health facilities around the globe. The ‘Kingsway Difference’ being the steps we take to support our partners from the design phase through to ongoing support post project completion, including ensuring our complete door systems are as straightforward to install as they can be, arriving on site with all componentry factory-fitted and tested in our state-of-the-art production facility.
Live product demonstrations online from our showroom
To make finding the right solutions easier for our partners, we’re now pleased to offer 1-to-1 virtual tours of our brand-new product showroom, equipped with the widest range of specialist door systems designed specifically for behavioral health – including our SWING DTM doorset.
With our private virtual tours, we can demonstrate the capabilities of our doorsets, ligature-resistant Division 10 products, smart ligature monitoring software and more to you clearly, remotely, and at a time of your convenience.
During your private virtual tour, you will have the opportunity to discuss your project requirements with us, drawing on our expertise in delivering innovative, effective, and custom solutions for behavioral health facilities throughout the USA.
To book a virtual tour, please complete the below form and a member of our team will be in touch. We look forward to speaking with you.
Want to learn more about our specialist door systems? Why not book an online demonstration?
We’ll provide you with live product demonstrations at a time of your convenience and answer any questions you may have. Simply request a demonstration below and we’ll be in touch!