At the Oakland Medical Center, an assessment of current rounding practices revealed inconsistencies in practice and varying levels of quality among nursing leaders. Leveraging technology can improve data collection, compliance and efficiency of rounding.

The KP Rounding app can enable real-time service recovery and escalation of urgent patient needs. Interactive training sessions were conducted for leaders, nurse managers, assistant nurse managers and charge nurses. Effective communication skills, AIDET, incorporating equity, inclusion and diversity and the impact of intentional rounding were shared in group discussions. Patient scenarios were created in simulation rooms and teams debriefed about their experiences and were provided feedback.

Training to document rounding on the mobile digital platform was included to ensure consistent practices. Training participants were surveyed on their level of comfort with rounding and the percentage of those very comfortable went from 50% to 67%. Scores on being very comfortable with documentation went from 33% to 61%.

The rounding app includes reporting capabilities for leaders to review unit level trends and provide them with the ability to adjust rounding questions based on current nurse sensitive indicators and patient survey results. Reports from this program can track unit level trends and progress on documented opportunities, escalations and recognitions. Individual performances of nursing leaders can also be reported to correlate the quality of rounds with patient experience scores. The quality of nurse rounding is determined by the number of issues and recognitions documented on a daily basis.