The Effect of Whiteboards on Patient Satisfaction

NCT02619474 | Completed

• 1 other identifier: H15-01896
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 266
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

Brief Summary

These days, particularly over the last decade, attention is being paid to the opinion of the patient and, in the case of pediatrics, the patient's family. Unfortunately, recent work has shown that this remains an imperfect process. Studies of inpatient families show that parents often leave hospital with only a minimal idea of side effects of drugs, who they can contact in the event that something goes wrong, and even something as simple as the date of the next medical visit. In fact, some studies have shown that adult patients don't even know the name of their doctor or nurse. While there are several papers examining the degree of unhappiness of parents in hospitals, there is very little research looking at what can be done to improve a patient's sense of satisfaction with care (and communication) while in the hospital. One suggestion has been the provision of whiteboards in the room that can allow the family to have a better idea of what is going on during the child's day. These have been suggested but never exposed to prospective, quantitative study. With the intention of improving the management of patients in the new Acute Care Centre, the department of strategic planning at Children's Hospital organized a three day IMPROVE session moderated by PHSA specialists in quality control. During this meeting, the clinical course of a child on the medical and surgical wards was mapped out. This allowed the group to examine various ideas aimed at improving the care of children passing through the hospital and the sense of parental satisfaction with the whole process. The main conclusion from the meeting (based both on available literature and the clinical experience of the group), was that communication between the medical team and parents should be improved. It was also concluded that the best way to do this would be to have a regularly updated whiteboard in each room. Prior to starting this, it was generally felt that the introduction of whiteboards should be tested in a prospective controlled manner - starting with a baseline study of patient satisfaction.

Conditions

Satisfaction; Physician-Patient Relations; Communication; Nurse-patient Relations

Keywords

Parent Satisfaction; Patient Satisfaction; Whiteboard; Communication

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (1)

• Parent satisfaction as measured on questionnaire

  The questionnaire was developed by the health services research unit from the University of Oxford and has subsequently been used in Canadian hospitals. The questionnaire contains eight sub-headings that cover different aspects of the admission (courtesy, communication, comfort etc). Within each sub-heading there are five questions, each is scored from 1 (poor) to 4 (excellent). The result is eight separate sub-scores, each with a maximum of 20 points, plus a total score of 160 points.

  6 Months

Study Arms (2)

Experimental

EXPERIMENTAL

Patients who have been admitted to the 3F or 3M wards under the care of the clinical teaching unit (CTU) after the introduction of the new, labelled whiteboard.

Other: Whiteboard

Control

NO INTERVENTION

Patients who have been admitted to the 3R surgical ward under the care of any of the nursing groups without the introduction of the new labelled whiteboard.

Interventions

Whiteboard OTHER

1. On morning rounds, the child's management will be discussed with the family and the day's plan for treatment and investigations will be written on the whiteboard. 2. The second step will be to review and update the whiteboard at the end of the day. Anything that has been left out or uncompleted will be highlighted and brought up on the following morning's rounds. Next, the nurse will ask the family to write down any questions. 3. Lastly, on the afternoon before a child's discharge, the nurse will take particular care to make sure the parents write down all of their concerns prior to going home. These specific questions concerning discharge planning will be addressed in detail at rounds the following morning.

Experimental

Eligibility Criteria

• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: No
• Age Groups: Child (0-17), Adult (18-64), Older Adult (65+)

You may qualify if:

• All patients who were admitted to the pediatric wards

You may not qualify if:

• Any patients/parents who do not wish to enroll in the study

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of British Columbia: lead

Study Sites (1)

BC's Children's Hospital

Vancouver, British Columbia, V6H 3V4, Canada

Location

MeSH Terms

Conditions

Personal Satisfaction; Communication; Patient Satisfaction

Condition Hierarchy (Ancestors)

Behavior; Treatment Adherence and Compliance; Health Behavior

Study Officials

• Mike Seear, MD

  British Columbia's Children's Hospital

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: RANDOMIZED
• Masking: NONE
• Purpose: HEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
• PI Title: Principle Investigator

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: October 19, 2015
• First Posted: December 2, 2015
• Study Start: September 1, 2015
• Primary Completion: December 1, 2015
• Study Completion: December 1, 2016
• Last Updated: September 21, 2017

Record last verified: 2017-09

Locations

CA (1)