'Lansley must listen to nurses on the front line' 
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Every week we’ll choose a practice article and pose a few questions for debate, post your questions or answers below …
- Intentional rounding: its role in supporting essential care
- Authors: Beverley Fitzsimons is the programme manager, Annette Bartley a faculty member and Jocelyn Cornwell the director at the King’s Fund Point of Care programme.
Key points …
- Concerns about essential nursing care have refocused attention on the need to ensure fundamental aspects of care are delivered reliably
- Intentional rounding involves health professionals carrying out regular checks with individual patients at set intervals
- The approach helps nurses focus on clear, measurable aims for undertaking the round
- It also helps frontline teams to organise workload on the ward
- Rounding can reduce adverse incidents, offer patients greater comfort, and ease their anxiety
Let’s discuss …
- How could you adapt intentional rounding for use on your ward or unit?
- The authors suggest “It may be possible that rounding might prove challenging for staff, because it leads them to encounter directly and personally some individuals’ painful circumstances via immediate, regular contact with patients as people”. What do you think?
- How can intentional rounding be used to improve the organisation of, and quality of, care?
- What are the benefits and potential pitfalls of implementing this approach in your place of work? How could the pitfalls be addressed?
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Readers' comments (9)
Anonymous | 12-Jul-2011 1:23 pm
I just don't think we'd have the staff to do it, especially during night shifts
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Anonymous | 12-Jul-2011 1:32 pm
won't it just lead to more paperwork?
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Irish Nurse | 12-Jul-2011 1:47 pm
We do two hourly rounding like this at the nursing home where I work. Can't see it working in the acute sector though.
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mike | 13-Jul-2011 8:12 pm
As I said in another very similar article, first of all the vast majority of places do not or will not have enough staff to do this, or do this well. Secondly, intentional rounding in and of itself can often be counterproductive, the frequency of 'rounding' as it were must be a clinical decision based on individual circumstances of each patient.
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Anonymous | 14-Jul-2011 12:29 pm
"Rounding" is something that we used to do years ago and while it may have been quite a boring way to nurse it was effective. Then back in the day, guys like Mike insisted that it was the wrong way to do things and these important decisions should be made by our "highly skilled, professional nurses", and so practice was changed and we have been doing things without "rounding" ever since.
Guess what? It hasn't worked, these important aspects of nursing have all but disappeared because nurses tend to do the things that they like to do rather than the things that need doing. It is nusring attitudes that need to change if things are to improve. And don't start blaming lack of staff and poor wages as they don't stop nurses prioritising or taking pride in their jobs.
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mike | 15-Jul-2011 1:23 pm
Anonymous | 14-Jul-2011 12:29 pm absolute rubbish. I, and I can imagine most of us, have always prioritised tasks on what needs doing most urgently, not on what I 'like' doing. Absolute bull.
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Anonymous | 15-Jul-2011 1:43 pm
"It is nusring attitudes that need to change if things are to improve."
how is that achieved?
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Anonymous | 20-Jul-2011 2:37 pm
Rounding can be achieved in acute areas where staff are engaged, determined and have done the productive ward type groundwork - organising stock, minimising interuptions etc. This frees up time for rounding to be done, and there is a reduction in paperwork, as position charts etc are amalgamated into one sheet.
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Anonymous | 15-Aug-2011 9:45 pm
As a Matron in an acute hospital I have seen the introduction of rounding and have seen a positive impact in the clinical areas. It has helped to free up time for staff a they have been able to use their time more effectively in many areas including reduction in toileting related accidents, falls and a reduction in patients needing to use their call bells
In terms of changing nurses attitudes, the majority of my staff just want to get on with providing the best care that they can do. It is often the additional pressures that are imposed upon them from on high in order to satisfy whatever the new strategy is for that week that they find difficult to manage. I am sorry to say that I am also required to put pressure on these staff members too...often having to label it as providing assurance, when in actual fact it seems we are at the beck and call of vulnerable middle management whose only agenda really seems to be protecting their own backsides.
Please do not always assume that it is because nurses cannot be bothered as it is not easy out there. What I really want to be able to do is provide the best assistance I can to empower them to do their jobs properly and be able to m,manage them in a way that I feel qualified to undertake and not in the manner that one of the 6 or 7 people that I have to regularly report to would like me to.
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