Audit And Feedback For Blood Glucose Point Of Care Testing

Abstract

Practice Problem: Patient identification errors in point-of-care testing (POCT) is responsible for test results being missed or transferred to the wrong patient’s chart. A hospital in Los Angeles County experienced a 50% compliance rate in patient barcode scanning prior to blood glucose POCT which affected the delivery of care. PICOT: The PICOT question that guided this project was: Among emergency room nursing staff (P), how does the implementation of audit and feedback (I), when compared to random observations (C) improve compliance of patient identification with barcode scanning before performing blood glucose check (O) within ten weeks (T)? Evidence: The evidence suggests that the implementation of an audit and feedback system decreases patient identification errors and improves staff compliance with POCT policies and procedures. Intervention: The intervention utilized for the change project was an Audit and Feedback system whereby nursing staff were monitored for their compliance in the proper identification of patients through scanning patients’ identification bands prior to blood glucose POCT. Feedback was provided to highlight any errors in patient identification. Outcome: The project results demonstrate an increase in the rate of compliance from 50% to 83% after the implementation of audit and feedback. Conclusion: The results of this project replicated the literature findings that the use of audit and feedback improve nurses’ compliance with barcode scanning prior to performing POCT. The findings of the project were very beneficial to the hospital, as they strive to provide the best patient care.