Quality Improvement Initiative Proposal

Problem Overview

The existing culture of achieving maximum results and efficiency in limited time has contributed to the medical professionals’ level of emotional burnout and inability to dedicate enough time to the communication and check-up on the patient’s satisfaction with the care provided (Ardalan et al., 2018). Facing many new patients on a daily basis, nurses frequently do not have the ability to connect with the individuals on a more personal level, as they are expected to provide quality medical intervention and physician support.

The diverse background of the patients is also a detrimental contributor to the quality of communication. Frequently, nurses are unable to reach a necessary level of cultural competence in such a limited amount of time allocated for diagnostics (Ardalan et al., 2018). The most common barriers in terms of nurse-patient communication comprise age, gender, culture, and religion (Ardalan et al., 2018).

Although the closure of the aforementioned barriers requires extensive intervention and cultural competence skills enhancement, some of the barriers in communication derive exclusively from the nurses’ perception of communication. For example, nurses feel a lack of interest and motivation, lack of attention from the authorities, poor interprofessional communication, and lack of standards related to proper treatment and interaction.

As far as the public hospital setting is concerned, the roots of poor communication with patients derive from a lack of communication between nurses and physicians. Essentially, when nurses’ shifts are changed, nurses who start their shifts receive limited information on the patient’s progress, and patients are barely aware of the names of nurses who assist them. For this reason, quality improvement initiatives in a public hospital should concern the use of bedside whiteboards in order to improve communication with patients and their oval awareness of the personnel working with them and their treatment progress.

Relevance of Quality Improvement Initiative

The issue of miscommunication between nurses and patients remains a challenging aspect of quality treatment security in public hospitals where the workload per professional sometimes gains unprecedented rates. According to the latest research, the overwhelming majority of patients remain dissatisfied with their communication with nurses, as nearly 80% of the patients do not know the name of their treating nurse (Lotfi et al., 2018).

Moreover, the aspects of interprofessional communication within a hospital setting contribute greatly to the quality of care, as frequently, valuable information concerning one’s health condition and progress is lost during the transition. It happens because one of the parties, namely nurses and physicians, either subjectively categorizes this information as irrelevant for other professionals or forgets to mention it (Tan et al., 2017).

The implementation of whiteboards is generally considered an efficient tool in terms of organizing key information on the treatment process and sharing it with the patients. Thus, it is expected that improving the patterns of bedside whiteboard organization would enhance the overall communication with patients and patients’ recognition of their practitioners.

Previous Research

Bedside whiteboards may be defined as tools for writing down key information on the patient’s profile in a hospital ward so it could be accessed by treating clinicians and patients. Initially, it is necessary to note that the process of data visualization contributes positively to the levels of patient satisfaction.

In a study conducted by Hitawala et al. (2020), in terms of the quality improvement initiative, the patients of the Cleveland Clinic-Fairview Hospital were provided with visual handouts that included staff names and positions, contact numbers, and essential information on the patient’s health conditions. Such an intervention has resulted in a significant increase in the patient satisfaction rate, with more than 90% of the hospital residents being satisfied with patient-provider communication (Hitawala et al., 2020). Thus, the study projected results to achieve levels of patient satisfaction with communication greater than 90% were successfully fulfilled.

As far as whiteboard-oriented studies are concerned, the results may not be as overwhelmingly positive, yet the overall outcomes project beneficial outcomes. For example, the research conducted by Virapongse & Witkowski (2018) demonstrates that 29% of the patients taking part in the survey consider the whiteboard to be an efficient assisting tool in terms of communication, outrunning business cards, more frequent visits, and fewer providers (“Results” section).