Redesigning Intensive Care Unit Rounds to Improve Collaboration at a Military Hospital

Required reading for all learners: Implicit Bias impacts patient outcomes

Effective team communication is critical to the safe delivery of health care. In the hospital, daily patient rounds are a time for the care team to discuss a patient’s status and plan. In the intensive care unit (ICU), this moment of team collaboration is essential for patient safety. The Joint Commission lists poor communication and lack of a shared understanding or mental model as primary contributors to most types of sentinel events in the United States. Nurses in the adult intensive care unit in a large military treatment facility were not consistently present in daily patient rounds and stated that team communication could be improved. An interprofessional rounding script was introduced across 2 adult intensive care units at a military hospital over 36 weeks. Rounds were observed and nurses’ perceptions of collaboration were assessed with pre-implementation and postimplementation Collaboration and Satisfaction About Care Decisions surveys.