The Effect of Whiteboards on Patient Satisfaction: A Prospective Controlled Study in BC's Children's Hospital

These days, particularly over the last decade, attention is being paid to the opinion of the patient and, in the case of pediatrics, the patient's family. Unfortunately, recent work has shown that this remains an imperfect process. Studies of inpatient families show that parents often leave hospital with only a minimal idea of side effects of drugs, who they can contact in the event that something goes wrong, and even something as simple as the date of the next medical visit. In fact, some studies have shown that adult patients don't even know the name of their doctor or nurse.

While there are several papers examining the degree of unhappiness of parents in hospitals, there is very little research looking at what can be done to improve a patient's sense of satisfaction with care (and communication) while in the hospital. One suggestion has been the provision of whiteboards in the room that can allow the family to have a better idea of what is going on during the child's day. These have been suggested but never exposed to prospective, quantitative study.

With the intention of improving the management of patients in the new Acute Care Centre, the department of strategic planning at Children's Hospital organized a three day IMPROVE session moderated by PHSA specialists in quality control. During this meeting, the clinical course of a child on the medical and surgical wards was mapped out. This allowed the group to examine various ideas aimed at improving the care of children passing through the hospital and the sense of parental satisfaction with the whole process.

The main conclusion from the meeting (based both on available literature and the clinical experience of the group), was that communication between the medical team and parents should be improved. It was also concluded that the best way to do this would be to have a regularly updated whiteboard in each room. Prior to starting this, it was generally felt that the introduction of whiteboards should be tested in a prospective controlled manner - starting with a baseline study of patient satisfaction.