A loud klaxon sounds in a busy hospital unit. A patient is in pain and needs the attention of one of your caregivers.

Unfortunately, nobody knows who should be going to the room. The patient just came into the unit and the assigned nurse is nowhere to be seen. Who is responsible for responding to the patient’s request?

Clearly, this is a nightmare scenario, but I bet there are people reading this for whom it may sound all too eerily familiar.

So, how can a properly constructed dynamic care team and directed messaging help prevent this from happening?

First, a dynamic care team can ensure that the patient care teams on the floor have the proper tools to make real-time patient-to-staff assignments. This should be a part of your modern nurse call solution, a call system that keeps all mobile devices up-to-date on which staff members are assigned to each patient.

Of course, this needs to be augmented with an alert to the Unit Coordinator or Charge Nurse whenever a patient doesn’t have a nurse or other key caregiver assigned.

The second and crucial part of the solution is directed messaging. This ensures that when a patient pushes a nurse call button, the call is sent directly to the appropriate member of the care team, regardless of where that individual is. The call can then be dealt with rapidly or escalated to other members of the care team as appropriate.

So, when looking for a clinical support system, make sure that the system has Directed Messaging the ability to get the right message to the right clinician instantly. Most systems just have text messaging, but this means you have to know in advance who the right person is. MH-CURE was designed around Directed Messaging. This capability leads to greater staff satisfaction – as there’s no more confusion around responding to patient needs – and ultimately improves the delivery of patient care.