The Impact of Nurse Leader Rounding on Patient Satisfaction Scores

Background: Patient satisfaction if a significant contributor to hospital patient volume and revenue generation. Hospitals that take vital steps to improve patient satisfaction in most cases will do well financially. The purpose of this QI project was to discover if Nurse Leader Rounding with Inpatient and Ambulatory Surgery patients at a pediatric orthopedic hospital was beneficial in improving patient satisfaction scores. Methods: This quality improvement project used Nurse Leader Rounding for three months as an intervention. Patient satisfaction survey results were calculated for six months before the intervention. Nurse Leader Rounding was then completed on all admitted patients. A focused script was used to guide rounding discussions with patients and families. Once complete, post-intervention survey scores were compared to pre-intervention scores. Results: Post-intervention, this project found that scores on two principal patient satisfaction survey question scores improved. For the question of Hospital Standard Overall, scores improved from 97.4% for Ambulatory surgery patients and 95.9% for Inpatient Surgery patients to 100% for Ambulatory surgery patients and 96.9% for Inpatient Surgery patients. For the question of Standard Nursing Overall, scores improved from 96.5% for Ambulatory surgery patients and 98.4% for Inpatient Surgery patients to 100% for Ambulatory surgery patients and 98.8% for Inpatient Surgery patients. These results represented a Standard Overall increase of 2.6% and 3.5% Standard Nursing for Ambulatory Surgery Patients. It also represented a Standard Overall increase of 1% and 0.4% Standard Nursing for Inpatient Surgery patient's post-intervention. Nursing staff expressed an increased positive perception of Nurse Leader Rounding on patient satisfaction post-intervention.Conclusions: Nurse Leader Rounding appears to be a valuable tool to improve the patient experience in the hospital setting. Though hospitals vary in size and volume, Nurse Leader Rounding can be a sustainable practice that is implemented easily, and provide patient satisfaction improvement in many settings.