Inspiring Patient Centered Care through Bedside Reporting

Purpose for the program: The purpose of this program is to initiate bedside reporting as an innovative addition to family centered care in the birthing center. The birthing center is part of a 555 bed tertiary care teaching hospital with magnet status and performing 3100 births a year. Changing to nurse-to-nurse report at the bedside will allow us to forge a new direction by creating safe environment, improving patient satisfaction, building trust with the patient and on-coming nurse.

Proposed change: The unit nursing council and management recognized a need to improve handoffs and reporting while keeping patient/family centered approach to care. Review of the literature was done and decisions were made to incorporate bedside reporting based on these reports. The council devised a plan for change that began with educating staff on the importance and safety concerns of adopting the change of moving report to the bedside. Staff will be instructed on the appropriate approach to providing sensitive health care information in front of the patient. Bedside report provides an opportunity for the patient to express needs and desires related to the plan of care.

Implementation, outcomes and evaluation: Staff received selected literature regarding bedside reports and family centered care. These topics were also discussed at staff meeting and unit inservice by the council leaders.  Opportunities for practicing these techniques were provided. Council leaders served as resource nurses mentoring other staff in adopting this change. Outcomes of this practice change will be monitored in several ways:  the first is follow-up phone calls to patients in which specific questions regarding report will be added to the usual survey. Another evaluation of the program will be measured through Press-Ganey scores for patient satisfaction before and after implementation of the change. From a staff perspective, the program will be evaluated through a survey regarding attitudes related to various report methods and perceptions of efficacy prior to the change and two months after the change. Staff comments will be analyzed to determine how the bedside report changed practice.

Implications for nursing practice: Bedside report provides one more opportunity to focus on patient and family centered care. This change will facilitate building trust with the oncoming nurse and enable the mother and family to participate in the plan of care.

Keywords: bedside report, family centered care