Bedside Educational Tool: Improving Patient Education and Nursing Documentation [Report]

Abstract

<p><b>Background:</b> The purpose of the Bedside Educational Tool (BET) project was to increase patient discharge knowledge by expanding K.rames education selections recorded in the discharge and maintained in the Electronic Health Record (EHR).</p>

<p><b>Methods:</b> A descriptive pre- post-comparison evidence-based improvement project was unde1iaken to determine if cueing with a collaborative patient point-of-care educational tool facilitated nurse-patient education and discharge documentation. To establish a baseline, chmi audits of patients discharged from a 32-bed medical-surgical unit within a large 378 bed acute care hospital for a consecutive 18-day period was performed. Three instruments were used in this project 1) Bedside Educational Tool (BET), 2) Nurse Usability and Usefulness Survey, and the 3) Patients Discharge Record from the hospital. Implementation consisted of initiation of the BET sheet and nursing education regarding documentation of Krames selections. Audited discharge records compared the Krames education selections in the EHR from 101 pre­ implementation chmis to 129 post-implementation chmis.</p>

<p><b>Results:</b> All nurses on the pilot unit 41 (100%) participated in the implementation of the BET. 37 (90.24%) nurses on the unit pmiicipated in the BET project HealthStream education. EHR Krames educational documentation increased after implementing the BET tool by 96% and the number ofKrmnes items selected per patient increased 229%. Nurses surveyed found the BET tool both easy to use and successful in the development of the collaborative patient-centered education.</p>

<p><b>Conclusions:</b> In hospitalized patients, the introduction of a patient-nurse bedside education collaborative tool (BET) increased collaborative patient-centered education and the K.rames education selections recorded in the discharge plan and the final EHR.</p>