Lovelace Westside Hospital: Satisfaction with Call Button Response Time

13 Jul 2012

It is well established that hourly rounding on hospital units can decrease call-light use, 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 scores on the HCAHPS question regarding prompt response to call button, employed this best practice of purposeful hourly rounding. In purposeful hourly rounding, 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 P’s”—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 satisfaction with the call-light response time to get a real-time gage of patient experience.