title: Quality and safety at the point of care: how long should a ward round take?
abstract: In April 2009 a 'considerative checklist' was developed to ensure that all important aspects of care on a team's routine and post-take general internal medicine ward rounds had been addressed and in order to answer the question: How long should a ward round take, when conducted to high standards of quality and safety at the point of care? The checklist has been used on 120 ward rounds: 90 routine ward rounds and 30 post-take ward rounds. Overall, the average time per patient was 12 minutes (10 minutes on routine rounds and 14 minutes on post-take rounds). The considerative checklist has encouraged and enabled documented evidence of high quality and safe medical care, and anecdotally improved team working, communication with patients, and team and patient satisfaction.
authors.affiliation: Worthing Hospital, Western Sussex NHS Trust. roselle.herring1@btinternet.com
authors.forename: Roselle
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Herring
authors.forename: Tejal
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Desai
authors.forename: Gordon
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Caldwell
mesh_terms: D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D007388:Internal Medicine / Q000592:standards*; D010348:Patient Care Team / Q000592:standards*; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D019095:Point-of-Care Systems / Q000592:standards*; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care