Promoting and Measuring the Patient Experience with Structured Rounding

Purpose: Hourly rounding is one “evidence-based” strategy to improve the patient's perception of their hospital experience. Limited research has been done, however, to evaluate the effectiveness of hourly rounding as a strategy to improve patient satisfaction in hospitalized patients. The purpose of this presentation is to discuss study methods and findings related to the measurement of the patient experience in a quasi-experimental research study in which two different implementation strategies were used to initiate hourly rounding in two similar patient care units.

 Methods: Following IRB approval, purposive sampling was used to select the control and intervention units. Hourly rounding was initiated following standard train-the-trainer education in the control unit, while a standardized hourly rounding protocol (SHaRP) was implemented in the intervention unit using formalized, structured classroom training accompanied by personal coaching and mentoring.

 Results: Metrics used to evaluate the patient experience include: monthly tracking of responses to specific items on the HCAP and NRC Picker questionnaires; two additional study-specific questions in daily hospital-wide discharge phone calls; completion of daily in-room rounding logs; one additional question in daily nurse leader rounds. Patient satisfaction ascertained in discharge phone calls yielded nominal data; therefore, chi-square tests were used to compare scores in the intervention unit to those in the control unit. Data were plotted to illustrate changes over time. A significance level of p<0.05 was used for all analyses.

 Conclusion: Hourly rounding improves the patient experience; however, statistical significance was demonstrated in only four research studies. The gap in literature suggested the need for an adequately powered, interventional study to be conducted over a period of time with data analyzed using robust statistical analysis. Findings, conclusions, and implications will be available for presentation at the time of the conference.