Standardized Attending Rounds to Improve the Patient Experience: A Pragmatic Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial

Abstract

Background: At academic medical centers, attending rounds (AR) serve to coordinate patient care and educate trainees, yet variably involve patients.

Objective: To determine the impact of standardized bedside AR on patient satisfaction with rounds.

Design: Cluster randomized controlled trial.

Setting: 500-bed urban, quaternary care hospital.

Patients: 1200 patients admitted to the medicine service.

Intervention: Teams in the intervention arm received training to adhere to 5 AR practices: 1) pre-rounds huddle; 2) bedside rounds; 3) nurse integration; 4) real-time order entry; 5) whiteboard updates. Control arm teams continued usual rounding practices.

Measurements: Trained observers audited rounds to assess adherence to recommended AR practices and surveyed patients following AR. The primary outcome was patient satisfaction with AR. Secondary outcomes were perceived and actual AR duration, and attending and trainee satisfaction.

Results: We observed 241 (70.1%) and 264 (76.7%) AR in the intervention and control arms, respectively, which included 1855 and 1903 patient rounding encounters. Using a 5-point Likert scale, patients in the intervention arm reported increased satisfaction with AR (4.49 vs 4.25; P = 0.01) and felt more cared for by their medicine team (4.54 vs 4.36; P = 0.03). Although the intervention shortened the duration of AR by 8 minutes on average (143 vs 151 minutes; P = 0.052), trainees perceived intervention AR as lasting longer and reported lower satisfaction with intervention AR.

Conclusions: Medicine teams can adopt a standardized, patient-centered, time-saving rounding model that leads to increased patient satisfaction with AR and the perception that patients are more cared for by their medicine team. Journal of Hospital Medicine 2017;12:143-149.

Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01931553.