Patient sitters work in healthcare facilities as caregivers who oversee the safety and well-being of patients during hospitalization. By providing nonclinical care and support to patients, sitters free up trained nursing staff to specialize in providing medical care.
Patient sitters perform a wide variety of caretaking tasks daily. Hospital sitters supervise patients and assist with personal care tasks such as eating, bathing, and dressing. They observe the patients and might be responsible for documenting a patient’s condition and treatment. Sitters can help patients perform range-of-motion exercises. They also provide companionship and help patients deal with loneliness or anxiety.
Hospitals and healthcare facilities can benefit from hiring dedicated patient sitters. Here are six specific reasons medical institutions should hire patient sitters.
Patient Sitters Provide Physical Assistance to Patients
Patient sitters help patients perform everyday tasks like personal grooming and getting around when they aren’t able to safely or easily move by themselves. Post-surgical patients may have a high risk of falling and causing harm to themselves, or they might be unable to perform simple hygiene tasks like bathing or using the toilet. Patient sitters reduce the need for nurses or trained medical staff to assist patients with these essential self-care tasks, freeing the team to focus on performing clinical tasks, thus increasing their value to the facility.
Hospital Sitters Provide Companionship and Emotional Support
Hospital stays can be scary and stressful, especially for patients that are incapacitated in some way. Post-surgical or very ill patients might feel worried, disoriented, or concerned about their condition. Patient sitters can provide comfort and support and offer a compassionate ear to allow the patient to voice their concerns. This helps patients feel reassured and more secure, resulting in a more positive overall experience for the patient during a challenging health crisis.
Sitters Increase the Safety of Hospital Patients
Patient sitters help patients at risk of falling get in and out of bed, move around their room, and go to the bathroom. They also ensure the room is safe for the patient and free of obstacles or other hazards. The sitters observe the patients and make sure the person isn’t doing anything that could potentially cause harm to themselves or others. Patient sitters are a much more humane solution than physical restraints for high-risk patients and provide a more compassionate measure of safety.
Patient Sitters Improve the Patient’s Recovery Experience
Image via Flickr by agilemktg1
Sitters provide companionship to patients. They may spend time talking to patients or sharing stories. Another person’s compassionate presence can comfort a patient and help them through the recovery process. Distracting someone through conversation or watching a movie together can help ease their suffering or remove the patient’s focus from their condition. Sitters may also interact by singing with or reading to the patient.
Feeling lonely or isolated might make a patient’s recovery more difficult and take longer. However, social interaction has been proven to positively impact hospital patients. Engaging in social activities like talking, reading aloud, or watching television with another person can improve a patient’s recovery experience.
Sitters Reduce the Burden on Nurses and Doctors
Nurses and doctors often have high patient caseloads and many responsibilities. By taking care of patients’ nonmedical needs, such as grooming, eating, and mobility, patient sitters ease the burden on the medical staff and allow them to maximize their skill set.
Patients who feel lonely, neglected, or unimportant may try to demand more attention from the medical staff. By seeing to a patient’s emotional and social needs, sitters can reduce the amount of attention the patient needs from nurses or doctors.
Sitters are trained to determine when a patient needs medical attention and can escalate care when necessary. Many sitters are also certified in CPR and basic life support (BLS), so they can provide life-saving techniques in an emergency until the medical staff can get to the patient.
Hospital Sitters Save Medical Facilities Money
Patient sitters are an ideal solution to the problem of meeting the needs of high-risk patients without increasing demands on the trained medical staff. Sitters reduce expenses for medical facilities by allowing doctors and nurses to perform at the top of their licenses and focus primarily on providing quality medical care to their patients.
Hospitals, healthcare networks, and nursing homes should consider patient sitters a valuable addition to their staff. A review of a patient sitter job description illustrates how patients, families, medical staff, and healthcare facilities benefit from hiring patient sitters. Sitters save medical institutions money by providing patients with care, assistance, and companionship. Hospital sitters also improve the patient experience by reducing physical stress and emotional distress.