RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Quality and safety at the point of care: how long should a ward round take?
JF Clinical Medicine
JO Clin Med
FD Royal College of Physicians
SP 20
OP 22
DO 10.7861/clinmedicine.11-1-20
VO 11
IS 1
A1 Roselle Herring
A1 Tejal Desai
A1 Gordon Caldwell
YR 2011
UL http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/11/1/20.abstract
AB In April 2009 a ‘considerative checklist’ was developed to ensure that all important aspects of care on a team's routine and post-take general internal medicine ward rounds had been addressed and in order to answer the question: How long should a ward round take, when conducted to high standards of quality and safety at the point of care? The checklist has been used on 120 ward rounds: 90 routine ward rounds and 30 post-take ward rounds. Overall, the average time per patient was 12 minutes (10 minutes on routine rounds and 14 minutes on post-take rounds). The considerative checklist has encouraged and enabled documented evidence of high quality and safe medical care, and anecdotally improved team working, communication with patients, and team and patient satisfaction.