Improving Daily Patient Goal-Setting and Team Communication: The Liber8 Glass Door Project*

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: To develop and implement a tool to improve daily patient goal setting, team collaboration and communication. DESIGN: Quality improvement implementation project. SETTING: Tertiary-level PICU. PATIENTS: Inpatient children less than 18 years old requiring ICU level care. INTERVENTION: A “Glass Door” daily goals communication tool located in the door front of each patient room. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: We used Pronovost’s 4 E’s model to implement the Glass Door. Primary outcomes were uptake of goal setting, healthcare team discussion rate around goals, rounding efficiency, acceptability and sustainability of the Glass Door. The total implementation duration from engagement to evaluation of sustainability was 24 months. Goal setting increased significantly from 22.9% to 90.7% (p < 0.01) patient-days using the Glass Door compared to a paper-based daily goals checklist (DGC). One-year post implementation, the uptake was sustained at 93.1% (p = 0.04). Rounding time decreased from a median of 11.7 minutes (95% CI, 10.9–12.4 min) to 7.5 minutes (95% CI, 6.9–7.9 min) per patient post-implementation (p < 0.01). Goal discussions on ward rounds increased overall from 40.1% to 58.5% (p < 0.01). Ninety-one percent of team members perceive that the Glass Door improves communication for patient care, and 80% preferred the Glass Door to the DGC for communicating patient goals with other team members. Sixty-six percent of family members found the Glass Door helpful in understanding the daily plan and 83% found it helpful in ensuring thorough discussion among the PICU team. CONCLUSIONS: The Glass Door is a highly visible tool that can improve patient goal setting and collaborative team discussion with good uptake and acceptability among healthcare team members and patient families.