Availability: Vital Emergency · Vital Inpatient

Getting a nurse's attention for something small, water, a blanket, pain relief, is hard from a bed or a waiting room chair. Service requests let the patient ask from the app, and route the ask straight to the staff member who covers that need at that location.

The request screen, asking how the care team can help

The patient opens the request screen, which asks "How can we help?", chooses a request type and confirms. The app replies "Request received" and lets them know the care team has been notified. Request types are configured per facility, and each can be restricted to certain locations or hours.

The request arrives in Care Team as a task, notifying the staff subscribed to that request type at that location. Because routing is by type and location, the patient does not need to know who is on shift.

A patient cannot send the same request twice within ten minutes; the app asks them to wait. And where no staff member is currently covering that request type at that location, the app displays "Sorry, requests are unavailable" and asks the patient to check back later, rather than accepting a request nobody would receive.

Why does a patient see that requests are unavailable?

Request availability follows staff coverage. A request type in a staffing-based mode is offered to patients only while a subscribed staff member covers that location, so it goes offline when coverage does. See Availability Settings in Care Team.

Can staff raise a request for a patient?

Yes, from the Make Request tab in the patient's details in Care Team.