Patient Journey Champions: A project to facilitate delivery of effective board rounds for inpatients, aiding flow through the hospital

Abstract

Our quality improvement project was designed to enable delivery of high-quality board rounds across the hospital with a view to improving patient flow. We designed a Patient Journey Champion campaign to enable this. As part of our campaign, we ran sessions with junior doctors. These comprised education on the structure of a board round, giving them an insight into the bigger picture on patient flow and eventually aiming to empower them to lead an effective board round on their respective wards, where they would act as 'Patient Journey Champions'. Following the workshops, we audited the quality of board rounds and compared it with baseline. The quality was measured against the hospital standard operating procedure. We noticed an improvement in the quality of board rounds and also a positive effect on length of stay on the acute admissions ward. We anticipate a continuing trend of improvement as this intervention is rolled out across more doctors and other staff groups, although this relies on the need to involve doctors in board rounds and empowering them with the appropriate skills. Simultaneously, work is now being undertaken by matrons of respective wards to upskill ward nurses and other allied healthcare professionals to aid delivery of improved board rounds.