Meet the Team: A Quality Improvement Initiative to Improve Family Knowledge of Their Care Team

Abstract

Objectives: Hospitalized families often have poor knowledge of care team members, which can negatively impact communication. Local baseline data revealed that few families had knowledge of team members. Our primary aim was to increase the percentage of families able to identify a member of their team to 75% over 1 year and sustain use of our improvement tools over 6 months.

Methods: We conducted a quality improvement initiative at a tertiary pediatric academic center. Plan-do-study-act cycles were used to implement and test 3 main interventions: (1) a "Meet the Team" form (MTTF), a visual handout outlining care team members; (2) verbal introductions at the start of patient- and family-centered rounds (PFCR); and (3) data sharing regarding family feedback about tool use. The outcome measure was the percentage of families successfully identifying team members. Process measures were the percentage of families who received the MTTF and the percentage of PFCR that included verbal introductions. Balancing measures included rounds length.

Results: We conducted structured interviews of 141 families and observed 11 597 PFCR events. There was an increase in the percentage of families who could identify a team member from 10% to 84%. The percentage of PFCR events that included verbal introductions revealed special cause variation, increasing from 40% to 80%. Rounds length held steady at ∼11 minutes per patient.

Conclusions: Implementing paired interventions of MTTF distribution and verbal team introductions was associated with increased family knowledge of team members and no change in rounds length.