How long should staff take to answer a call bell in a residential facility? This is a source of tension in many healthcare settings, with patients expecting that staff in aged care homes to respond within 4 minutes. However, the average time it takes for staff to answer a call bell is about 3.57 minutes during the day and 3.42 minutes at night. That means 85 percent of call bell responses happen within less than five minutes. If you are looking for ways to improve patient care services at your nursing home, improving response times should be at the top of your list.
Barriers to Faster Response Times
Are you dealing with several barriers to faster response times to call bells? If frequent calls are piling up and turning into a significant backlog for your team, you’ll need to find a way to improve response times. Provide your staff with nurse call light systems to make it easier to respond to patients faster. With nurse call light solutions, your team can improve response times and the quality of their responses.
Issues with Response Quality
Frequent calls put a lot of strain and pressure on your staff. Too many calls also mean tasks pile up, resulting in a substantial workload for your team. If they have a hard time managing patient requests, provide them with equipment and alert systems that will improve their response times. Nurse call light products help.
Improvement Measures
Another barrier for staff when they attend to call bells is how to prioritize urgent requests. That task becomes even more challenging when multiple alarms go off simultaneously. Employees are bound to find it hard to determine which calls they should attend to when they have yet to learn any ideas about the nature of the requests coming in.
Workforce Shortages
Another challenge to workflow efficiency and teamwork is the shortage of staff. If you have fewer people on board, that means longer response times for call bell times. You’ll need to consider the possibility of expanding your team sooner rather than later. That is also likely to have a positive impact on your operations. More people mean your team won’t be understaffed and overworked as they try to attend to all those call bells.
Problem Resolution
Using nurse call light systems helps facilities offer better support levels to patients. With innovative products and platforms, some of which combine a call bell system with mobile technology, staff finds it easier to respond to call bell alarms. With systems that make it possible for your employees to attend to call bell alarms quickly, you can improve satisfaction levels in your patients. Find products that help your staff answer calls more efficiently and promptly. Can staff receive alerts on their smartphones or mobile phones? How much key information can they learn from an alert, so they know how to prioritize call bells? To keep call bell response times high, look for those systems and integrate them into your processes. Consider options in the market from reputable sources.
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