Service Excellence:
Promptness Response to Call
(A Lesson in Change)
• TEAM MEMBERS
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Debbie Casteel
Mary Morrow
All 3 NESW staff
Patients
Opportunity Statement:
Answering patient call lights in a timely manner
meets the requests and needs of our patients. Despite
implementation of a new electronic call light system,
patient satisfaction scores with promptness response
to call remain low.
Project Goal:
To answer call lights on 3 NESW within 1 minute.
Press-Ganey patient satisfaction scores relating to
Promptness Response to Call will increase to a mean
of 85.
Most Likely Causes Identified
Through Data
• Open PCT and SC positions
• Lack of knowledge among staff on hospital-wide
Gold Standard to answer call lights within 1
minute.
• Unit culture is to answer the call light in the
patient room instead of at our nursing stations.
• Lack of knowledge on “how” to answer the call
light at the nurse’s station.
Solutions Implemented
• Despite informing staff that the gold standard to answer the call light
was 1 minute, call lights were not being answered in a timely fashion..
• We decided to track our patient satisfaction scores against our DuKane
Call light system data that we started to receive in April 2003..
• At that time we answered the call light 25% of the time within 1
minute. We discovered staff did not know how to use the phone at the
desk.
• 6/03 --All staff received additional inservice on the use of the
phone/computer system to answer the call light at the nurse's station.
Our scores began to show improvement (increase to 70%)
• Light duty staff assigned to call light duty as a pilot for 6 months.
Staff decided the best way to answer the call lights was to have
someone assigned to the task and began to work out ways to
accomplish this task.
Solutions Implemented
• 4/04-- All staff were asked to include this project as a
“Magis” goal in their annual performance review (“I will
work together with the team, to increase our unit DuKane
system scores of “answering standard call lights within 1
minute” to reach at least the 80th percentile most of the
time”).
• 10/04– We began printing out graphs from the DuKane
System daily so the charge nurses could see which shift
was “winning” with the best scores. With this buy-in by
staff, we were able to increase our scores to the 80th
percentile.
Patient Satisfaction Results
3 NESW_Promptness to Call
Individuals
UCL = 87.78
85
UCL = 84.53
Mean = 82.02
80
Mean
Mean = 79.79
Mean = 77.49
LCL = 76.25
75
LCL = 70.44
70
Our patient
satisfaction
scores have
increased from a
mean of 77.49
to 82.02. The
process is in
control even though we have reached our goal of
a mean of 85 yet. Since Nov, 2004, we have been
in the 80th percentile or above for answering call
lights within 1 minute
Conclusions
• Answering the call lights at the nurse’s station desk is
directly related to successfully answering the call lights
within 1 minute.
• Answering call lights at the nurse's station
within one minute is related to an increase in patient
satisfaction mean scores.
• Change in unit culture possible with:
-- taking time to “dig down” into the detail of “why” staff
didn’t answer call lights at the front desk.
--sharing data in graph format with staff.
--comparing our data with patient satisfaction data.
--persistent vigilance for the first 30 days after a new change.
--team approach to accountability.
Next Steps
• We are now concentrating on change of
shift. We page the RN’s before the end of
the shift to remind the to do “pain
medication” rounds and we also page PCT’s
to remind them to do “toileting” rounds.