Improving clinician agreement and comfort through the development of a pediatric behavioral health huddle tool

Hospitalized pediatric patients with behavioral health (BH) diagnoses awaiting transfer can exhibit behaviors that may lead to workplace violence such as aggression. Workplace violence can lead to discomfort in caring for these patients. Huddles can be used as a tool to identify potential for violence, to help address workplace violence, and improve clinician situational awareness.

Utilizing QI methodology, a BH specific huddle tool was created and implemented on an Acute Care floor that identified key components such as triggers and behavioral stability. Mixed methods were used to study the intervention including focus groups, surveys and measurement of agreement (surrogate for situational awareness). The aims of this quality improvement (QI) project were to 1) improve situational awareness by increasing agreement between team members 2) improve the overall comfort of the clinical team caring for BH patients by 10%.

Agreement between clinicians on patient stability increased by 20%. Comfort in caring for BH patients increased by 4%. Providers reported the tool increased their understanding (89%) and communication (81%) regarding plan of care.

Standardized huddle tool can be utilized to increase situational awareness among team members caring for patients with behavioral health diagnoses and may help to address workplace violence.