Implementation of Nurse Integrated Rounds Improves Interdisciplinary Communication in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit

Effective communication and collaboration between all health care providers are important for the delivery of high-quality and efficient patient care. The medical complexity of acute and critically ill patients requires assimilation of voluminous amounts of data to develop individualized treatment strategies created in collaboration with all providers. This makes the delivery of safe, error-free patient care a challenge. According to The Joint Commission Sentinel Event Data 2022 Annual Review, communication breakdowns continue to be a leading contributing factor to patient harm.¹  Miscommunication is common during patient care handoffs, including interdisciplinary rounds, where the omission of critical information and transfer of erroneous information can occur.^2–7  Patient safety reports (PSRs) can be used to document and quantify these communication failures. For example, Umberfield et al⁸  coded incident reports and classified them as either an information failure or a lack of shared understanding. As expected, omissions were...