“Care services” is a term describing various healthcare services and functions where staff are not part of the nursing staff, but a separate professional team with special skills and training.
A report from SKL, the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, describes care services as “the tasks that can be performed for patients on the ward by personnel with service skills”. This report refers in particular to examples of four areas in which care services are common: cleaning at healthcare facilities, management of food and meals, storage at departments and transportation of patients and samples.
A key concept behind care services is that staff trained to provide healthcare, such as nurses and assistant nurses, should be given the opportunity to work with tasks that require healthcare skills, while staff working with care services have the training and professional expertise to perform service tasks on wards and at clinics.
Care services save on care resources currently working with both service and care, as well as create a different, care-related role for the patient call system. Separate management of services creates a work environment where the right staff perform the right tasks for their patients, regardless of why they have been summoned.