An Interactive Evaluation of Patient/Family Centered Rounds on Pediatric Inpatient Units

In order to provide excellent patient care and customer service, communication among caregivers should be efficient, effective, and timely.  In addition, patients and families should have the opportunity to be included in those discussions, to ensure accurate information is relayed and to provide an opportunity for patient/family input into care planning.  Unfortunately, the Batson rounding process prior to implementation of patient/family centered rounds did not promote collaboration among team members, nor provide the patient/family a consistent opportunity to be involved in their own healthcare decision making.  If Batson Children’s Hospital continued to utilize that traditional rounding process, staff was likely to continue seeing the effects of lack of communication among team members and patients/families, including: patient satisfaction scores reflective of lack of communication among team members, increased length of stay, increased medical errors, a decrease in safety and quality of care, and decreased patient flow.   Successful patient/family centered rounds are interprofessional rounds conducted in collaboration with the patients and their families, and are one more way to improve communication among the healthcare team members and recipients of care.  In order for the patient/family centered rounds initiative to be successful, stakeholder buy-in and involvement is imperative.  As Harris, Roussel, Walters, and Dearman (2011) explain, “the significance of collaboration and communication with the stakeholders cannot be understated” (p. 58).  For an initiative or program to succeed, it is imperative to involve organizational stakeholders from the beginning, to provide intermittent progress checks, and to respond to and address concerns throughout implementation (Harris et al., 2011).   Therefore the purpose of this presentation is to present the findings from an interactive evaluation with organizational stakeholders of patient/family centered rounds on Batson Children’s Hospital Inpatient Units using a Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) model.

The main objective of the study was to tailor the patient/family center rounding process into an efficient and effective communication venue for the stakeholders.  Specific objectives were as follows:

• Engage the organizational stakeholders in reflecting, identifying problems, and offering solutions during the implementation process
• Utilize a performance improvement process to identify problems, generate solutions, and test changes in an effort to improve program effectiveness and implementation
• Facilitate the program’s development, implementation, and  improvement by examining processes

Reference:

Harris, J.L., Roussel, L., Walters, S.E., & Dearman, C. (2011). Project planning and management. Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.