A duress alarm your reception team can trigger without leaving the desk, built for medical clinics.
A silent trigger on every screen, answered by the colleagues nearby. No server hardware, it runs on a PC you already leave on. Works even when the internet is down. From A$299/year.
No credit card required for the trial. No additional hardware needed. No IT needed, as long as you have appropriate rights.
A patient is refused a same-day appointment, or wants results the GP hasn’t released, and the conversation at the front desk turns. Your receptionist is solo through lunch cover. One hotkey, the treatment room and the practice manager see exactly where help is needed, and the waiting room never knows.
What a multi-room practice has to plan for
Staff are spread across rooms
A practice manager at the front, nurses in treatment, GPs behind closed doors. The person who needs help and the person who can give it are rarely in the same room, and calling out only tells the waiting room that something is wrong.
It has to work from a consult room
Aggression does not only happen at the counter. A clinician alone with a patient needs a way to call for help that does not involve reaching for a phone or leaving the room.
Sessions run outside reception hours
Early starts, late clinics and weekend sessions often run with a skeleton team. The alert has to reach whoever is actually on site, not the roster from Monday.
Where multi-room practices usually put it
- Every reception workstation, including the second screen that only gets used at busy times.
- Each consult room, so a clinician alone with a patient has the same trigger as the front desk.
- Treatment and procedure rooms, where staff are often turned away from the door.
- The nurses’ station, which is usually the closest thing to a permanent responder.
- The practice manager’s office, behind a closed door and out of earshot of the waiting room.
- The back office or tea room, so a break does not mean nobody sees an alert.
The common mistake is covering the front desk and stopping there. Reception is where incidents start, but it is rarely where the help is.
Three colours. Everyone understands them in one demo.
Green means ready
A small dot sits quietly in the corner of every screen. Staff know at a glance the system is live.
Red means help now
One click, hotkey or desk button, and a pop-up appears over whatever colleagues are working on, showing exactly where help is needed. No sound in the room. Nothing the visitor can see.
Orange means responding
The first colleague to respond is recorded, and the person who raised the alert sees their button turn orange. They know help is on the way before it arrives.
- Help is acknowledged. The moment a colleague responds, the person who raised the alert sees their button turn orange, they know help is coming before it arrives.
- No server hardware. Duress Alert runs on a Windows PC you already leave on, and alerts travel over your own network, so they keep working even when the internet is down.
- Easy to roll out. You install it yourself in about five minutes per computer, with the silent-install packages and a rollout guide included. Already a Duress Alert customer upgrading? We help you do it over a secure screen share.
Prefer something you can press without looking?
Add a physical button where it helps, from A$25 plus delivery. Unlike a hardwired button, Duress Alert warns you on screen the moment a button is unplugged, and confirms when it’s back, so you never discover a dead button during an emergency. And if a button ever fails, staff can still raise the alert from the screen, tray icon or hotkey.
A control you can evidence.
Under WHS law in every state, practices must manage the risk of occupational violence, and RACGP accreditation (Criterion C3.5, Work health and safety, 5th edition) expects you to show how. Duress Alert’s dated raise, respond, reset history is evidence you can table, not a policy on a shelf.
“We had three separate incidents involving aggression toward our GPs within a few months. Since installing Duress Alert, staff have used it to defuse situations before they escalated.”
Liz Baker, Practice Manager, Perth WA
Duress Alert was built inside Australian general practice. IT4GP has supported GP clinics for more than 15 years, the duress button came from watching what actually happens at reception, not from a security catalogue.
Simple annual pricing
Team Safe
Group Safe
Corporate Safe
Multi Site Safe
Prices exclude GST. Local taxes are added where they apply.
Install and options
- One-off install A$99, includes training and 12 months of support.
- Optional physical desk button, from A$25 plus delivery. It warns you on screen the moment it is unplugged, so you never find a dead button in an emergency.
Start your free 21-day trial, covering up to 25 computers. Configure it and roll it out across your site, at no cost. The trial itself is free. If you go ahead afterwards, we can set it up with you for a one-off A$99. When you move from the trial to a full licence there is no extra effort, everything you have set up simply keeps running. No payment details to start, and you can cancel anytime.
Prices in AUD. In the UK, USA, Canada or Europe? See local pricing: UK, USA, Canada, Europe.
For your IT provider
Your IT person (or ours) can push Duress Alert to every computer automatically, silent-install MSIs generated by the server with your configuration baked in, central management of every setting, and support for shared/remote desktops (RDS) and Mac. Client-to-server traffic stays on your local network (default TCP 8001); only the server talks to the cloud, over HTTPS, for licensing and reporting. Have an IT team, multiple sites, or shared/remote desktops? See our IT deployment page, silent installs, central configuration and rollout at any scale.
Common questions.
Yes. The trigger is a click, a tray icon or a keyboard shortcut on the computer already in front of them. There is no sound in the room by default, and nothing appears on their screen that a patient sitting opposite would recognise.
Every machine staff work at: reception, treatment rooms, consult rooms, the practice manager’s office and the nurses’ station. There is no per-machine cost within your licensed user count, so the usual answer is all of them.
The alert is tied to the workstation, not the person. Anyone sitting at a machine with the client installed can raise and respond, which suits rooms that different clinicians use across the week.
Yes, provided each machine is named for its room. Name them at install and the alert tells responders exactly where to go.
Yes. The RACGP Standards for general practices (5th edition) expect practices to manage risks to staff safety under Criterion C3.5. A duress alarm on every workstation is a practical, demonstrable control for occupational-violence risk.
No. Duress Alert runs on the Windows and Mac computers you already have. An optional physical desk button can be added from A$25 where a tactile trigger helps.
Annual licensing starts from A$299 for up to 10 users, with Group, Corporate and Multi Site plans above that, plus a one-off A$99 install. Every plan includes a free 21-day trial.
The trial licence expires and alerting stops until a licence is applied. Nothing is charged automatically, and we hold no payment details from the trial.
Buy the licence in the Duress Alert cloud portal. If your server is cloud connected, which is the default, the licence updates itself at the server’s next check-in, and it checks in daily. For an offline installation, our team coordinates with you to apply the licence.
Whichever you prefer. You can run the silent installer yourself in about five minutes per computer, your own IT provider can do it, or we can do it with you as a one-off install service that includes training and 12 months of support.
Tell us about your site.
Tell us your team size and setting, and we’ll show you how Duress Alert works on your own desks and what a rollout looks like. We get back to you quickly.
Protect the front desk, without wiring a thing.
Questions? +61 1300 366 911 (Australia).
