Increased Nursing Participation in Multidisciplinary Rounds to Enhance Communication, Patient Safety, and Parent Satisfaction.

Effective communication among health care team members is a mainstay of patient safety, especially in a neonatal ICU (NICU), given small errors can have serious and life-threating consequences. Ineffective communication with families of hospitalized children can lead to decreased satisfaction and trust in the health care team. To enhance communication, the NICU nursing staff at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center spearheaded an initiative to create an enhanced nursing role in multidisciplinary patient rounds. Education of the nursing staff and other team members and the development of a rounding script for nurses was instrumental for successful implementation.