Group Naming Conventions

Careful thought should go into the naming conventions you use for Vocera groups. If you are unfamiliar with the terms and names used by clinicians at your hospital, it will be very important for you to interview each department along with those of your staff that call these departments to determine the best group names. It may take some time to discuss naming conventions with your staff and come to a consensus, but it is well worth it.

It is very important to use the group names that the staff members use. Department and group names listed in official documentation such as directories or hospital maps typically do not reflect how the hospital staff would refer to the departments and groups in conversation. For example: Mother Baby Care Center (hospital directory) versus L & D (Labor and Delivery). If the names you assign to Vocera groups do not match the group names that the staff commonly uses, users will experience frustration when the Vocera Genie does not recognize the names, and they may complain about poor speech recognition.

It is sometimes difficult to identify the underlying cause of speech recognition complaints. The problem is often wrongly diagnosed as a flaw in the overall system rather than a problem with inconsistent or unfamiliar group names. For instance, let’s say your hospital directory refers to the Orthopedics department as Davis Fourteen; however, all of your staff simply calls it Orthopedics. In this example, you should make sure the department group in the Vocera system is named Orthopedics, not Davis Fourteen.

When group naming conventions are consistent across departments, staff members will have a much easier time learning the names and will be more successful guessing the name of a group when they are not absolutely sure. Additionally, consistent naming conventions improve your ability to scale the database through ease in database administration. If you have one department that has the following groups of users, I C U Nurses, I C U Unit Secretary, and I C U Charge Nurse, you should continue this model for the N I C U group names. This allows you to re-purpose many of the same documentation and templates you have created for the previous unit and it makes it easier for staff to remember all of the group names because they will be similarly structured.