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

The evolving literature on safety WalkRounds: emerging themes and practical messages

“…Few studies have gathered objective safety measures. A notable exception is the study by Donnelly et al ,43 which finds that the mean number of days between safety events doubled after the implementation of radiology safety rounds. Furthermore, to our knowledge, no studies collected data on the financial costs and benefits of such programmes.…”

“…Middle managers provide critical support for safety rounds39 55 as well as implementation practices that include application of analytical tools for understanding the problem, small tests of change, and communication, feedback and celebration of results 43 45 48 66–68…”

“…Relatedly, several studies report on a department or unit-level implementation of safety rounds rather than a hospital-wide implementation. We found safety rounds papers for radiology,43 intensive care unit,52 ED65 and anaesthesia53 applications. In a notable departure from the ‘quick fix’ type of issues typically identified through safety rounds, a paper reporting on radiology safety rounds conducted by radiology leaders highlights 10 substantial process changes that come from the programme 43.…”

Improving Patient Safety in Radiology

“…Executive walking rounds have become widely used for promoting and improving safety culture and are now conducted in several hundred medical centers in the United States [13][14][15][16][17]. In typical executive walking rounds, hospital executives visit patient care areas and discuss safety issues with frontline employees.…”

“…In typical executive walking rounds, hospital executives visit patient care areas and discuss safety issues with frontline employees. Most of these issues have been targeted at nursing units [13][14][15][16][17]. Executive walking rounds have been found [13][14][15][16][17] to have a positive effect on patient safety through multiple mechanisms, including demonstration of the executive and institutional commitment to safety, use of the knowledge of frontline employees to identify areas for improvement, improvement in attitudes about safety, and improvement in safety culture.…”