Lovelace Westside Hospital: Improving Satisfaction with Proactive Call Button Response

13 Jul 2012

It is well established that hourly rounding on hospital units can decrease call light usage, decrease the number of falls, improve patient satisfaction, improve team communication, and promote patient safety. The TCAB unit at Lovelace Westside Hospital, seeking to improve HCAHPS scores regarding prompt responses to call buttons, employed this best practice of purposeful hourly rounding, in which nurses enter a patient’s room every hour during the day and every two hours at night. In an effort to assess a patient’s current condition, nurses go through the “3 Ps”—pain, potty, position—to determine current and potential future needs accurately. By asking patients what they need before a call, nurses can resolve issues proactively. Nurses on the TCAB unit also ask patients about their satisfaction with the call-light response time to get a real-time gage of patient experience.