My original post, Call, Don’t Fall, is consistently found in Google searches and read often. I received an email for a hospital staff member about it.
“I enjoyed reading your blog spot on the “Call Don’t Fall” sign. I’m interested in a better way to prevent falls in my hospital system. You mention saying “When You Need Help, Just Call.” If you were a patient at the time, did you perceive yourself to need help with getting up to the bathroom?
When I was a patient I didn’t realize how weak I was and didn’t call and almost fell in the bathroom. (I’m only 37 years old) I’m looking for a way to remind patients that they may not be as strong/stable as they think they are when the nurse or nursing assistant is in another patient’s room.
Just trying to think outside the box and get a non-medical patient’s perspective.”
I replied with the following.
“Thanks for reaching out to me. I actually saw this sign in my brother’s recovery room. (See Circus Level Tension.)
I can tell you that he didn’t think he needed help, and wouldn’t have asked for it even if he did! So, I can empathize.
This blog post has always been one of my top posts, and your email is my top response to it. You bring up a key consideration I haven’t had as direct of experience with. Thanks.
Here are some variations that would address your point that a customer may not even realize they need help. I have included some narrative for each one to make it easier to reference my reasoning. The “#” refers to the linguistic labels to what I am referencing.
“Trust us, just call.” – Has a nice rhetorical ring to it utilizing #assonance
“Just call.” -Simple and to the point, & ”just” reason.
“Better to call.” -Incomplete and short command with ambiguous modal operator “better.”
“Until you get better, call.” -Lesser included structure with modal “better call”, punctuation ambiguity, “better” = healthy, “until”
“It’s just easier if you call.” -(plays on “it’s just x if”/yes response/”easy” is power word)
“We recommend you call.” -For people who like direction
“It’s up to you to call.” -For independent people
“Want to get better? Call.” -sounds like a two step process to getting better (“1 2 get better”,) & rhetorical question
”Call us. We’ll show you why.” -That answers the question that you know they are asking themselves.
Put CALL in caps so it stands out.
Also, instead of an image of slippers, you might include an image of a patient attempting to get out of bed with assistance.
Slippers don’t give the whole picture and slippers slip, right?
If you really wanted to test these, you could test several of them and compare for yourself.
Let me know how it goes. I’d love to hear. Thanks, again!”
One of my earliest articles, Coaching Child Athletes 1, contains a great Denis Waitley story to illustrate these points, as well.
That was fun to revisit that. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
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