Dependency Tool For Care Homes

1. Dependency Tool For Care Homes
2. Dependency Assessment Tool For Care Homes
3. Dependency Tool For Care Homes California
4. Dependency Tool For Care Homes Near

Care 4 Quality have developed a dependency calculator which helps you to evidence and focus on the first element of safe staffing: having sufficient numbers of suitably qualified, competent, skilled and experienced persons deployed in order to meet the requirements of the home. It will provide you with a staffing calculation to enable you to staff your service safely.

The Dignity in Care campaign does not officially endorse any of the tools, but they can give very good examples and starting points for you to develop your own tools if you so wish. Also, take a look at the Dignity in action facebook page (opens new window), to follow or initiate discussions about audit tools and training suggestions.

1. How the dependency and capacity tool was developed Service improvements resulting from use of the tool Safe staffing levels are vital to high-quality care so a community nursing service developed a tool to align anticipated patients’ care needs and staff availability Developing a dependency and capacity staffing tool.
2. Dependency tools assist providers to plan staffing levels based on the needs of people using the service. The provider sent us an action plan telling us what action they would take to ensure they met the required standard. The purpose of this inspection was to check whether the provider had made the necessary improvements.

They have also developed a supporting information document to help you complete and update the dependency tool.

Pre-Implementation

Before you commence using the tool, you need to:

• decide whether the assessment will be divided into different care areas, care units or floors
• agree if you want to or need to implement any 1:1 care hours into the tool
• review any additional support needs that people have
• identify how the shift patterns operate
• identify the skill and competency of each staff member
• decide how often the dependency tool is going to be reviewed
• decide who completes it and how do they know what the individual’s care needs are.

Getting Started

The service will need to implement an effective system to determine how many staff are required. The most common way to evidence this process is through the use of a dependency tool.

There is no single ratio or formula that can calculate the answers to the staffing ratios required over the range and scope of care homes. The right answer will differ across and within organisations, and reaching it requires the use of evidence, evidence-based tools, the exercise of professional judgement and a truly multi-professional approach. Above all, it requires openness and transparency within organisations and with the people you support and the public.[i]

[i] How to ensure the right people, with the right skills, are in the right place at the right time, NHS England Nov 2013.

To download the guide for just £24.99 -follow this link.

Further Reading and Guidance

Should you require any further guidance, please contact Care 4 Quality:

About BEST

This tool has been developed by the RCN Emergency Care Association (ECA) and Faculty of Emergency Nursing (FEN).

BEST is a workforce planning tool for use at local level in your Emergency Department (ED) to allow any disparity between nursing workload and staffing to be highlighted. The tool allows you to:

• analyse the volume and pattern of nursing workload in your ED
• track this against your rostered staffing level
• calculate the whole time equivalent workforce and skill mix which would be required to provide the nursing care needed in the department during the audit period.

The tool does not produce recommended staffing levels but will allow EDs to work locally to reduce any disparity between workload and staffing. This can be achieved for example by improving patients pathways, departmental and hospital processes, roster designs and actual staffing.

What's required

The BEST calculation requires data to be collected and input for a seven-day period on an hour-by-hour basis. A user guide is provided below, together with the various data collection appendices to explain how to gather your data, how to enter it and what the results portray.
It is important to pay particular attention to the definitions and instructions relating to:

• how to measure patients dependency in adults and children
• which staff to include and which to exclude.

Every ED is different and it is important that your results are used by the people who know most about your ED, you. BEST is not designed to define a minimum staffing number or to compare organisations to each other.

How it works

Dependency Tool For Care Homes

The calculations work by using nurse-to-patient ratios in the various dependency categories.It is important that these ratios reflect how care is actually delivered in your department, if they do not then the outputs from the tool will not be accurate.

Dependency Assessment Tool For Care Homes

The ratios used by BEST are:

• total dependency - 2 nurses to 1 patient
• high dependency – 1 nurse to 1 patient
• moderate dependency - 1 nurse to 2 patients
• low dependency - 1 nurse to 3.5 patients

The hourly data sets used by BEST are:

• patient dependency volume in the department using the Jones Dependency Tool
• the total number of staff rostered to be clinical on shift in the department.

A calculation will also provide an indication of what skill mix breakdown is required in the whole time equivalent workforce in your ED using the ECA National Curriculum and Competency framework.
For help and advice or to offer feedback please email us at eca@rcn.org.uk.

User guide

Dependency Tool For Care Homes California

The following documents are in PDF format:
How to use BEST (PDF 298 KB)
Appendix A - Adult JDT (PDF 27 KB)
Appendix B - Nursing workload sheet for confirming patient category (PDF 28 KB)
Appendix C - Children’s JDT (PDF 29 KB)
Appendix D - Hourly data collection tool (PDF 82 KB)
Appendix E - Cumulative hourly totals (PDF 93 KB)

Access the tool

Dependency Tool For Care Homes Near

The tool can be accessed and downloaded