Working towards a safer and more sustainable NHS by innovating cost-effective solutions.
Evolution to badge hats
Other common issues experienced are below:
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Complex to collate all the information required and then to double check the staff who have left, before placing the order.
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Time consuming to measure all clinicians’ heads to match each size of the individual named, bespoke hats, along with the colour scheme also.
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Ordering new hats for new staff members or for lost hats can be a drawn-out process to replace. It is also more expensive as smaller orders/volumes are more expensive and have delivery charges associated with them as well.
Some hospitals can take more than 6 months, sometimes 12 months to gather all measurements required to place the orders and sometimes, hospitals give up and abandon the project altogether due to the complexity & time involved.
We have conducted specialist testing on our theatre badge hat range, and we are working on a streamlined process when ordering them, to make it as simple as possible to order for full teams without the weeks/ months it can take to collate the orders for embroidered hats.
Our new product is a simple and effective way to identify all theatre staff members and other people who attend theatres such as visitors and students also.
Another reason we evolved our embroidered theatre hats into our new range of detachable badge hats, is because some infection control departments will not allow staff to take their hats home to wash so our badge hat range will enable central laundering, just like scrubs and staff would just need to keep their name badges safe, which they are already familiar with doing.
After uncovering so many complications and issues with regards to hospitals trying to collate the information required to order personalised embroidered scrub caps, we knew that we could find a better way to personalise them, so we set out on a long journey of research, understanding and product testing.
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Through in-depth research, we have identified some common objections, obstacles and limitations to hospitals implementing personalised reusable theatre hats. This has enabled us to create our exciting new reusable product range. Our innovative design has a personalised name badge affixed, which is simply detached for laundering.
Over the last 3 years, we have investigated a plethora of fixation methods and badge materials: from magnets to Velcro to a plastic window/pocket on front of the hats and we eventually found the perfect fixation device along with an innovative name badge.
You can see from the images above how we have arrived at our destination of our new identifiable badge hats which are easy to attach, remove and clean!
We believe that our theatre badge hat range could replace disposable theatre hats for all members of staff in the operating department in the future. Visitors and students who are often not included in the roll out of embroidered hats could be included in this also.
Another common issue which hospitals face after implementing embroidered theatre hats occurs when staff leave the department- this often isn't considered or factored in at the implementation stage. Staff turnover can be notoriously quite high, so, if just 20 members of staff leave a department per year, with 4 hats each, that is 80 hats lost by that department which has a financial implication to it also.