Whiteboards to Facilitate Hospitalized Patient Communication, Safety, and Education: A Scoping Review

Bedside whiteboards are ubiquitous fixtures in hospitalized patients' rooms and present unique, low-cost opportunities to improve patient care. Specifically, bedside whiteboards may enhance communication practices, safety standards, and patient education. Despite their commonality at the bedside, the direct impact of whiteboards on patient care remains unclear.

To perform a scoping review of medical literature to synthesize available evidence and identify gaps regarding the impact of bedside whiteboards on patient communication, safety, and education.

Published articles evaluating the impact of physical, patient-facing whiteboards on patient communication, safety, and education for adult patients hospitalized on medical-surgical floors and intensive care units.

MEDLINE via PubMed, Google Scholar, Embase, Web of Science, and CINAHL databases.

We performed a scoping review using Mak and Thomas' Steps for Conducting a Scoping Review and PRISMA-ScR guidelines. Two reviewers independently performed database searches on relevant publications that evaluated the impact of whiteboard-based interventions on communication practices, safety standards, and patient education.

Thirteen articles were included in the final analysis. Studies were conducted on general medicine-specific units (n = 9, 69%) or medicine-surgery inpatient units (n = 3, 23%). Twelve of the 13 studies evaluated patient communication metrics, including provider identification (n = 9), patient engagement in care plan (n = 6), patient-provider communication (n = 3), interprofessional communication (n = 1), and discharge date estimation (n = 4). Six of these studies showed a statistically significant improvement in some aspect of patient communication. Patient safety metrics and education efforts were rarely included in whiteboard-based interventions, with only 2 studies exploring each aspect, respectively.

Most studies focused on whiteboards to facilitate patient communication, with 4 studies showing 6 statistically significant improvements. Our scoping review highlights a paucity of research evaluating how whiteboard-based interventions could enhance patient safety and education, and future studies are necessary to explore this potential.