improving staff responsiveness

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I am part of team looking to find ways toimprove staff responsiveness to pt's requests/calllights? Anybody who would like to share tips/ideas how you facility/floor has tackled this issue, would be greatly appreciated:)

Specializes in Telemetry.

I'm not sure what your ratio is, but one intervention that has been quite successful is hourly rounding--it's not as bad as you'd think. Hourly rounding (and teamwork) will do wonders for your patient satisfaction scores!

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Send the call light abusers home!

Tell the patients they are ONLY alloted one ring/day.

Problem solved :chair:

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Specializes in Acute Care Cardiac, Education, Prof Practice.
This is the flip side of managers' magical thinking that doesn't recognize the scarcity of the resource of nursing and CNA time.

Yes, we can all say better staffing will cure all problems (and it will help with quite a few), but the problem of paying for it doesn't go away by saying "it's not rocket science."

@Golfer Thank you for looking at the picture from the many angles that are involved. Unfortunately you can't just add staff without incurring substantial costs.

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@Golfer Thank you for looking at the picture from the many angles that are involved. Unfortunately you can't just add staff without incurring substantial costs.

This is true. However, if the staff are also required to act as waitresses....

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Academics.

Somebody said a "concierge" person. Although some might disagree with the title because it sounds very hotel-like, that might be an option.

As long as the concierge person has no set duties, it could work. That it probably the most important point of the job description: no set duties. Hiring another PCT might not be good enough because they have set duties depending on the facility, i.e. BGs at a set time, vitals at the start of shift, charting, etc.

The main job description could be bi-hourly rounding for all patients (with the other hour taken alternately by nurses and PCTs) and answering call lights. NO OTHER DUTIES.

If the concierge position also required PCT training and/or experience for transfers and repositioning, it could work. A nurse extern position for a nursing student could be established to fill the role. (Nursing students are desperate for experience before graduation...)

However, the downside would be the concierge position being taken advantage of by all other roles, depending on the unit culture.

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Folks (just in case you didn't/don't know) there is money to hire staff. It's just that it's easier/costs less to make it your problem not theirs to remedy. There's gonna be some great bonuses out there for admin this year.

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Folks (just in case you didn't/don't know) there is money to hire staff. It's just that it's easier/costs less to make it your problem not theirs to remedy. There's gonna be some great bonuses out there for admin this year.

Where I work, that money went to a higher purpose like buying the maintenance guys a 2011 van even though the beater 2001 they had was operational. It wasn't the prettiest thing but it started up and got them from point A to point B.

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Somebody said a "concierge" person. Although some might disagree with the title because it sounds very hotel-like, that might be an option.

As long as the concierge person has no set duties, it could work. That it probably the most important point of the job description: no set duties. Hiring another PCT might not be good enough because they have set duties depending on the facility, i.e. BGs at a set time, vitals at the start of shift, charting, etc.

The main job description could be bi-hourly rounding for all patients (with the other hour taken alternately by nurses and PCTs) and answering call lights. NO OTHER DUTIES.

If the concierge position also required PCT training and/or experience for transfers and repositioning, it could work. A nurse extern position for a nursing student could be established to fill the role. (Nursing students are desperate for experience before graduation...)

However, the downside would be the concierge position being taken advantage of by all other roles, depending on the unit culture.

I actually think this is a great idea. When one of our techs is injured they are designated to "light duty" that means only VS and BS but they did it for all the patients. I actually thought it was a good system because when all the techs are responsible for everything they get caught up in rooms bathing or what not and other stuff falls through the cracks. I think having someone designated to answer call bells combined with a pager system for the nurses would work well. As long as that someone was qualified to deal with positioning, getting patients to the bathroom, etc. There's no reason that has to be the nurse in most cases.

In my facility we have a unit secretary who answers the call bells and can ask what they need then decide who to send in. Of course, this is hampered by the frequent inability to FIND the nurse or tech in question, and the whole unit goes into mild disarray when their is no unit secretary (which is frequent at night, because of course, everyone is just sleeping :)). I like the idea of a central operator or secretary sending me text messages of what my patients need (room 4 - SOB, room 6 - water) so I can prioritize, and maybe the other nurses could send to each other too (caught up, silence IV in room 7 please?).

I think the things standing in the way of answering call bells is:

1) Problems getting the message to the right staff member

2) Staff members too overloaded with tasks to be able to answer call bells

3) Overuse of call bell "crying wolf" burnout etc

If you want to fix the problem, tackle those.

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I got it.

Tell them to do it.

Period. It doesn't matter if your a tech, a PT, OT, staff nurse whatever...if you work for that facility and your part of the healthcare team you should be answering call lights if you are in that vacinity.

I was recently told..when I asked... "can I go check on the pt in XXX, their call light is on"

"no, the techs will get to them when they can. She probably just wants to go to the bathroom"

REALLY? I kind of think that's pretty important. You have a 90 yr old who has the wits about her to be able to go to the bathroom with assist...yet you can't get your lazy butt out of your ROLLING chair to help her and won't let me because I'm not covered under the facilities insurance...so someone's grandma is sitting there just waiting and trying to hold it.

I find that offensive.

I don't care who you are...even the suits...if call light is on...get your tush in there and find out why!

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I find a real problem is people(Nurses and CNAs alike) who don't run like a ninja to bed alarms! Drives me up the wall....

Now that made me giggle.

I need to get my ability to "run like a ninja" up to speed before I find a job. LOL... :D

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Specializes in Med-Surg, Emergency, CEN.
:lol2: Still trying to figure out how ninjas run...
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You could improve my "responsiveness" by giving me 2 minutes to relieve myself... 5 minutes to wolf down a sandwich.... or 15 seconds to rub my aching, burning feet.

Another ridiculous "study" by a clueless administration.:cool:

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