Nurse Physician Pod-Based Assignments on General Medicine Units: A Quality Improvement Project

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Nurse Physician Pod-Based Assignments on General Medicine Units: A Quality Improvement Project

Lee, Tracy - Dissertation

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title: Nurse Physician Pod-Based Assignments on General Medicine Units: A Quality Improvement Project

creator: Lee, Tracy

subject: Dissertations, Academic.

description: Background: Workflow structures on three inpatient general medicine units at a six hundred and fifty bed academic medical center were not conducive to facilitating attendance at patient progression rounds and interdisciplinary bedside rounding. Nurses were assigned to provide care to patients who were geographically spread throughout the unit, making interdisciplinary communication and regular attendance at patient progression rounds an impractical, and at times unachievable goal. The nurse to patient assignment of generally one nurse to four patients resulted in nurses often working with up to four different physician teams. This care model did not promote efficient communication between the nurses and physicians.Purpose: The purpose of this Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) quality improvement project was to develop nurse and physician pod-based assignments within the medicine units to improve attendance by nurses at patient progression rounds and interdisciplinary bedside rounding thereby increasing communication between nursing and physician teams. Each unit was divided into three pods consisting of one team of nurses and physicians working together as a team.Methods: This project was influenced by Kotter’s eight step change model. Data on attendance by nurses at daily interdisciplinary patient progression rounds was collected pre and post intervention. A thirteen-question survey was sent to nurses to gather qualitative data on the project.Results: Attendance by nurses at patient progression rounds increased post implementation of pod-based assignments. Post implementation attendance at patient progression rounds increased by 41.7%. Survey results showed improved communication between nurses and physicians after implementation of pod-based assignments within the medicine units. Conclusions: There are benefits to having small teams geographically located working together in delivering care to a group of patients. Communication between nurses and physicians is improved when teams are geographically aligned. Further research is needed to understand how nurses and physicians can work together in a more collaborative manner.

publisher: Simmons College (Boston, Mass.)

contributor:

date: 2018

type: Text

format: 1 PDF (70 Pages)

identifier: td_np_2018_tl

source:

language: English

relation:

coverage:

rights: Material from the Simmons University Archives collections are made available for study purposes only. For more information, or to request rights to reproduce or reuse any material, contact the University Archives at archives@simmons.edu.

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