The Importance Of Bedside Reporting In Nursing

Introduction

Improving quality of care in the healthcare system begins with the patients. According to the Institute of medicine, (IOM), the deaths per year that were caused by medical errors were estimated between 44,000 to 98,000. Medical errors are common to occur in today’s complex healthcare system, even though, hospitals and all other healthcare organizations regularly provide in-services to their staff and train them in regards to new changes in the healthcare. In addition, the health care system also provides counseling to patients who are affected by the errors and to their families afterwards. Still, medical errors still continue to occur. Hence, the healthcare profession continues to implement new methods that can help in improving

(2012) reviews that bedside reporting among nurse’s increases patient satisfaction and increases patient perception about teamwork. The purpose of this literature review was to show that handling patient information to another nurse at the end of the shift is an important clinical process which allows nurses to share important information regarding their patients to ensure a continued plan of care and satisfaction of the patients. Bedside handoff should be encouraged in order to exchange complete information about the patient that nurses are taking care of because it allows the patient to participate in his or her own plan of care. In addition, it allows the oncoming nurse to actually observe her patient and ask questions at the same time. According to Joint Commission’s 2009 National patient safety goals, bedside reporting is considered as a critical meeting for nurses. Moreover, bedside reporting allows patients to be actively involved in their care and ask questions to their nurses. Overall, a bedside nursing report promotes patient’s quality of care as well patient’s satisfaction and most importantly allows patients to correct any misconceptions regarding their

Data was obtained before and after the practice change. The patient survey had five questions. Each question was answered by using a liker scale with five points. Such as, 1 point was given as the being the best and 5 points were given as being the worst. Therefore, 1.5 to 2 was the mean scores range before the practice; all scores after the practice change and had a mean of 1, which concluded that patients were satisfied with the bedside reporting. Patients stated that “the nursing staff helped us to understand our health condition and kept us informed of our daily condition” and were satisfied with the bedside reporting. In addition, the nurse’s interactions with the patients during bedside report reassured the patient that the nursing staff works as a team and everyone is aware of the plan of care. More importantly, a patient witnesses a professional and secure transfer of responsibilities by working together with the nurse. Patients get the chance to contribute information to the discussion and ask questions. Thus, allowing the nurse and the patient an opportunity for not only to share information, but it also promotes improves