Hourly Rouding

Hourly Rounding

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Hourly Rounding

Patient care and satisfaction is the foremost important motive of health care facilities and nursing staff. In many hospitals management more often check the patients’ satisfaction by conducting several surveys. The most important issue highlighted in surveys was patients' concerns regarding nursing rounding on them. Most of the patients feel that nurses visit them only a few times a day due to which they cannot communicate their issues to them. The same issue was also highlighted in the hospital where I work. Specifically, the patients in the surgical unit were highly concerned about this issue. In surgical ward patients after the surgery need special attention as after being operated their body is weak and most of the critically ill people are not even able to communicate. So, it is important to check on them more often.

Many researchers support hourly rounding interventions that helped patients a lot. The research conducted by Margo A. Halm in which he discussed the usefulness of hourly rounding indicated that there are significant improvements in the patients’ satisfaction level. This is because events like falls were reduced while and all patient’s needs were met on time (Halm, 2009). Also, Beverly in his research paper conducted an experiment in which he implemented hourly rounding intervention on 9 patients while other 9 were visited by nurses a few times only. The results indicated that patients that were visited hourly were more satisfied with the care they were provided as their need was met (Ford, 2010). Several other types of researches were done on this intervention that identified the importance of this practice. Due to this a senior nurse of our unit board created an hourly rounding board for nurses that will be placed in the patient’s room. All nurses had to visit their assigned patients hourly and mark their initials on the board in each hour.

Hourly rounding is a systematic nursing intervention that is designed to promote the patient’s centered communication between staff and patients. This will improve the patient’s perception of their care. Additionally, this practice will reduce patient falls, skin breakdown by providing nurses more time for patient care related tasks (Goldsack & Cunningham, 2015). This intervention will also significantly improve HCAHPS and patient satisfaction scores. Generally, there are 5 P’s associated with hourly rounding that is, pain, position, potty, periphery, and pump. According to 5 P’s nurses are recommended to ask patients regarding their pain and how are they feeling. Secondly, they need to ask patients whether they are comfortable in the position or needed to be turned. Thirdly, nurses should ask about the washroom needs of the patients. They also need to ask patients regarding the position of call light that t whether it is accessible to them and another thing that they need such as water. Lastly, nurses are required to check the IV pump of the patients as well. In another definition of 5 P’s the term, privacy is also used in which nurses are supposed to ask patients regarding privacy concerns as well.

Hourly rounding is very beneficial for the surgeons and physicians as well as they can check the hourly situation of patients and can change medications etc. if needed so that the patient can be recovered easily. Also, in case a patient’s condition is critical then they can be shifted timely to the intensive care unit on time to avoid severe consequences caused by delay in shifting. However, many nurses are still not familiar with the importance of this intervention. It is, therefore, important to spread awareness among nurses so that they can learn the effectiveness of this process.

References

Ford, B. M. (2010). Hourly rounding: a strategy to improve patient satisfaction scores. Medsurg Nurs, 19(3), 188-191.

Goldsack, J., Bergey, M., Mascioli, S., & Cunningham, J. (2015). Hourly rounding and patient falls: what factors boost success?. Nursing2019, 45(2), 25-30.

Halm, M. A. (2009). Hourly rounds: what does the evidence indicate?. American Journal of Critical Care, 18(6), 581-584.