Campus Location

Dallas Campus (Online)

Date of Award

11-2024

ORCID

https://orcid.org/0009-0008-5742-3190

Document Type

DNP Project

Department

Nursing

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice

Committee Chair or Primary Advisor

Sandra Cleveland

Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor

Pattie Sunderhaus

Abstract

Developing and maintaining good communication is central in nursing because the goal is to achieve the best outcomes for the patient. In the past, written handover reports have been the standard way nurses communicate with each other, especially in the hospital and in home-based practice. Despite this rationale, this approach has considerable weaknesses: its high risk of mistakes and misunderstanding could negatively influence patient outcomes. In light of these concerns, this project examines the role of bedside shift reports in pediatric home care and the patient readmission rate. This project employed a quantitative, cross-sectional research approach involving 32 pediatric home health nurses across 8 weeks of trial. Such data were obtained using an online tool called SurveyMonkey, and the changes to the patient readmission rate were compared using IntellectusStatisticsTM with paired t tests. The study results presented a statistically significant reduction in readmissions; the number of cases reduced from seven in the preimplementation phase to four in the postimplementation period (p = .02; 57.14%). These findings show that bedside shift reports can go a long way in enhancing nurse communication and improving patient outcomes by decreasing the rate of readmissions. Implementing bedside shift reports was time-consuming, as it involved educating the staff about the new practice; however, the advantages of improving patient care and staff collaboration make the difficulties worthwhile. The results support the current literature and confirm the benefits of bedside shift reports as an innovative model for decreasing adverse patient outcomes and enhancing the quality of care in pediatric home health. There is more to be discovered on how these could be implemented and their effects in different health care settings.

Keywords: shift report, bedside shift report, patient care, patient outcomes, cross- sectional, pediatric home, SurveyMonkey

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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