IRQN Award Paper: Operational Rounds: A Practical Administrative Process to Improve Safety and Clinical Services in Radiology

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jacr.2008.05.017 Byline: Lane F. Donnelly, Julie M. Dickerson, Todd W. Lehkamp, Kevin E. Gessner, Jay Moskovitz, Sally Hutchinson Keywords: Walk rounds; operational rounds; safety; quality improvement Abstract: As part of a patient safety program in the authors' department of radiology, operational rounds have been instituted. This process consists of radiology leaders' visiting imaging divisions at the site of imaging and discussing frontline employees' concerns about patient safety, the quality of care, and patient and family satisfaction. Operational rounds are executed at a time to optimize the number of attendees. Minutes that describe the issues identified, persons responsible for improvement, and updated improvement plan status are available to employees online. Via this process, multiple patient safety and other issues have been identified and remedied. The authors believe that the process has improved patient safety, the quality of care, and the efficiency of operations. Since the inception of the safety program, the mean number of days between serious safety events involving radiology has doubled. The authors review the background around such walk rounds, describe their particular program, and give multiple illustrative examples of issues identified and improvement plans put in place. Author Affiliation: Department of Radiology, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, Ohio Article Note: (footnote) Editor's note: The International Radiology Quality Network (IRQN) offers monthly awards for the best manuscripts submitted to the IRQN on the subject of quality improvement in radiology. An annual award recognizes the best of these articles.