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Improving Compliance in Obtaining Daily Weights in a Large Academic Children's Hospital
Jacqueline E Crawford1, Colleen Garvin Coyne, Katherine Calder
1Department of Nursing, Respiratory, & Neurodiagnostics (Mss Crawford and Calder) and Office of Safety and Medical Operations (Ms Coyne), Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Insights
Improving pediatric inpatient daily weight compliance is crucial for timely treatment and discharge. Changing the weighing time from 8 AM to 4-6 PM significantly boosted compliance from 38% to over 94%.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Nursing
- Healthcare Quality Improvement
- Patient Care Management
Background:
- Daily weight monitoring is essential for pediatric patients, particularly in gastrointestinal and endocrine units.
- Noncompliance with daily weight collection delays critical treatment and discharge planning.
- Baseline compliance rates were as low as 38%.
Purpose of the Study:
- To improve the compliance rate of obtaining daily weights in a pediatric inpatient unit.
- To reduce delays in treatment and discharge planning by enhancing weight monitoring adherence.
- To implement a low-risk, high-yield intervention for nursing practice.
Main Methods:
- The intervention involved changing the time for obtaining daily weights from 8 AM to a 4 PM to 6 PM window.
- The study was conducted on an inpatient gastrointestinal and endocrine nursing unit.
- No significant resources or complex procedures were required for implementation.
Main Results:
- Compliance with daily weight collection increased dramatically from a baseline of 38% to 96% post-intervention.
- The high compliance rate was sustained, averaging 94% over a 24-month period.
- The intervention successfully exceeded the target compliance rate of 80%.
Conclusions:
- A simple, low-effort change in the timing of daily weight collection can significantly improve compliance in pediatric inpatient settings.
- This intervention effectively supports timely treatment and discharge planning.
- Sustained high compliance rates demonstrate the long-term benefits of this nursing practice improvement.
Abstract:
Noncompliance in obtaining daily weights leads to delays in establishing treatment and discharge plans in pediatric populations. An inpatient gastrointestinal and endocrine nursing unit aimed to increase compliance of obtaining daily weights from baseline of 38% to 80%. The time daily weights were obtained was changed from 8 AM to an interval of time 4 PM to 6 PM. The compliance rate increased to 96% and has been sustained at an average of 94% over 24 months. This report describes a low-risk intervention that took minimal effort to implement but yielded high results to exceed the goal.
