Making Hourly Rounding Stick: St. Lucie’s Third Try Is the Charm
It has taken more than three years, two failures, and an epiphany about how to make change stick. But nurse leaders at St. Lucie Medical Center are enthusiastically calling hourly rounding a success seven months after piloting the much-talked about patient safety strategy for the third time on St. Lucie’s med-surg unit.
The unit recently attained the hospital’s highest score for patient satisfaction—a difficult-to-attain accomplishment for any med-surg unit. Plus, patient falls have decreased and call bells are ringing less often.
Another sign of success from an operational perspective: Hourly rounding has now successfully spread to two other units at St. Lucie—and nurses from across the hospital are clamoring to implement the strategy in their areas, too.
This is music to the ears of Barbara Edwards, the clinical nurse leader who spearheaded the initiative. That’s because she has learned by trial and error why St. Lucie—and she believes, many other hospitals—often have difficulty making hourly rounding stick.
Few, if any, nurses would argue that hourly rounding is not good thing to do from a patient safety perspective. But nursing leaders also need to consider the impact that rounding has on their nurses’ workflow. Mandates from nursing leaders as to how rounding should be conducted may not be received well by staff nurses—and may ultimately fail.
A better approach, and one taken by St. Lucie: “Give the unit nurses some flexibility as to how rounding will work,” says Edwards. “When they have input, they will find some way to make it work.” That’s how St. Lucie came up with a successful version of hourly rounding that is all their own.
---------------------------------------------------This is an excerpt of an article that ran in the Summer 2009 issue of The Business of Caring newsletter. Read the full article about hourly rounding in The Business of Caring.