August 19, 2020
There are four main reasons your hospital needs a patient sitter program:
- It increases patient safety
- Patients get a better experience
- Nurses are more satisfied
- It saves you money
1. It Increases Patient Safety
Video monitoring systems, alarms, and other forms of technology are sometimes touted as more cost-effective alternatives to hiring hospital sitters. However, these only address patients who are at risk of falling.
Other safety issues require more than just video monitoring. Identifying patient safety risks to help reduce the risk of suicide—something on The Joint Commission’s National Patient Safety Goals for 2024—requires a well-trained sitter to keep at-risk patients safe.
Sitters should be trained in de-escalating crisis situations and recognizing signs of mental and physical distress, cardiac arrest, and stroke. They should also obtain certifications in life-saving techniques such as CPR.
While sitters do lower the number of patient falls, they can also enhance other patient safety measures, especially when it comes to behavioral health.
2. Patients Get a Better Experience
Without a dedicated patient sitter program, clinicians are often tasked with patient sitting on top of their regular job responsibilities.
When nurses are tasked with patient sitting, they lose time on the floor, negatively impacting the nursing-to-patient ratio. This only adds to an already heavy workload, stretching the rest of the staff too thin and making it that much harder to provide a great patient experience.
A patient sitter program gives those hours back to nurses. Clinical staff can recapture up to 0.44 hours of clinical care per patient day from a program that uses dedicated, well-trained sitters. Scaled out over an entire facility over the course of a year, the results are massive.
3. Nurses are More Satisfied
Nurses are too often pulled into tasks outside of the scope of their clinical responsibilities. Giving them more time to focus on patient care makes them happier and gives your patients a better experience.
“The lack of a patient sitter program at our facility was causing major disruptions in our staffing. We were forced to pull our techs, CNAs, and unit coordinators off their normal duties to sit with a patient, which put a strain on our clinical operations and ultimately wreaked havoc on our overall staffing. [Now, the patient sitter program] has made life easier for our nurse managers and we see that reflected in the morale of our team.”
-- CFO, Heart of Florida Regional Medical Center, Davenport, Florida
4. It Saves You Money
An efficient patient sitter program not only enhances patient safety and satisfaction but also proves to be cost-effective. The significant overhead costs associated with utilizing nurses and CNAs for patient sitting can be mitigated by employing a dedicated team of well-trained sitters, thus optimizing your hospital's resources more efficiently.
Sitters can also be trained to perform environmental services and patient transport tasks to further reduce overhead labor costs and streamline various hospitality services.
Editor's Update: This post has been revised in April 2024 to ensure accuracy and thoroughness.
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Healthcare