Acute Care Hospitalizations: Intentional Rounding and the Relationship to Patient Satisfaction

Patients evaluate their experiences to determine if they will allow hospitals to provide their needed health services. Patient experience scores are used by hospitals to assess patients’ feelings about their interactions with the health care team and providers, the hospital facilities, and their likelihood to recommend the hospital to others. The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine whether a significant difference existed in patient satisfaction between those receiving care in a North Carolina inpatient health system before and after implementing intentional rounding (IR). The three research questions addressed the independent variable by comparing Press Ganey survey data for three dependent variables: response to call bell, whether the patient will recommend the hospital, and discharge information. The theoretical foundation of the study was Donabedian's framework that includes a structure-process-outcome model that focuses on the structure of the physical and human resources available for providing care, clinical processes involved in delivering care, behaviors exhibited during the giving of care, and outcomes resulting from care provided. The collected data were analyzed with a Pearson correlation and linear regression. The study results indicated that there was a significant relationship (p < .05, p = .028) between IR and call bell response. The findings also showed that no significant relationship existed between IR and the patient’s likelihood to recommend the hospital to others or between IR and the patient’s understanding of discharge information. The findings of this study may lead to positive social change by adding to the growing body of knowledge related to patient satisfaction and health care quality through providing insights to health care administrators about IR practices.