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Hourly rounding improves patient safety

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, April 26, 2007

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Call lights are both frustrating and essential features in most hospital units. Although the lights are invaluable for alerting staff to patient needs, those needs often are not emergencies, and constantly answering the calls can tie up a workday. A recent study shows that if nurses used hourly rounding, call light use was reduced by 38%, and the nature of those calls were more important to the patient's well-being. Consider the following during hourly patient rounds:

• Address the "three Ps:" pain, position, and potty. Once patients understand that the nurse will round consistently to address these issues, they stop using the call light.
• Check for environmental comforts that could bring a patient to use the call light, such as tissues and a pitcher of water.
• Before leaving, ask whether the patient needs anything else and then tell the patient when to expect another round.

To get more information, go to Briefings on Patient Safety (BOPS). For the cost of just three stories, you can get the entire April issue of BOPS. Click here to choose between the PDF and HTML versions for just $30. Subscribers to the online version of BOPS have free access to this article. Subscribers to the print newsletter can find this article in their April issue.

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