Doctor of Nursing Practice Program

• Committee Chair Name & Credentials:
  Jennifer Barut PhD, MSN, RN
• Committee Member Name & Credentials:
  Laura Lewis MHA, MSN,RN

DNP Project Abstract

Implementing Bedside Nursing Report In An Adult Acute Care Setting

Purpose
The purpose of this quality improvement project was to transfer patient data from one nurse to another, known as a bedside nursing report. An unstructured bedside nursing report that occurs away from the bedside place’s patient safety, quality of care, and patient satisfaction in jeopardy. This project’s goal was to determine whether the introduction of bedside nursing report in an adult acute care setting would reduce incident reports at shift change and improve patient satisfaction rates.

Methods
Incidents that occurred during shift change were collected for two months prior to implementation. Based on the incident report data, a bedside nursing report protocol was created. This protocol explained the process of how each nurse can continue their usual workflow and still document key points of their patient’s care, for shift report. The protocol also explained the new tool used for documenting these key points of the patient’s care, which was called the “bedside nursing report checklist”. The bedside nursing report checklist had a few questions at the end for the nurse to ask their patient during report, to get patients involved in their care. Following the training and implementation, post-implementation incident report data was collected for two months to review incidents that occurred during shift change.

Results
Analysis of pre-implementation and post-implementation data showed improvement in all incident categories, which included: Airway Management, Diagnosis/Treatment, IV/Vascular Access Device, Lab/Specimen, Patient ID/Consent, Safety/Security and Skin/Tissue. Review of incident report data pre- and post implementation showed there was a 50% decrease in incidents reported during shift change.

Patient satisfaction scores increased from pre-implementation 68.2% to 75% post-implementation.

Implications for Practice
Outcomes of implementation for bedside nursing report for an adult acute care setting were consistent with current evidence that beside nursing report protocols and checklist tools are effective in reducing incidents at shift change and increase patient satisfaction scores overall.

Implications for the future would be to expand the bedside nursing checklist tool to an interdisciplinary version that considers all departments.