HEALTH workers have been given a tracking system to protect them from harm.
Darlington Primary Care Trust (PCT) is issuing district nurses, health visitors and health care assistants with equipment that keeps them in contact with the trust and allows help to be sent in minutes.
Where staff have either alerted their manager to an issue or have failed to update the system then the equipment automatically triggers a response. This puts them in touch with senior managers at the trust and, subsequently, the police.
Trust health and safety manager Keith Charlton said: "Lone working in the community is a major issue identified by the PCT especially among high-risk groups such as district nurses and health visitors , who often visit people in their own homes.
"We have developed a bespoke system around each staff group which they can easily activate before entering a premises."
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