Improving Quality and Efficiency of Postpartum Hospital Patient Education Delivery

Abstract

The impact of the coronavirus-19 pandemic is forcing hospitals around the world to organize care differently than before. In March of 2020, the target organization’s Birthing Center was faced with the dilemma of closing their discharge classes and move towards individualized teaching while controlling length of stay. The focus of this quality improvement doctoral project was to evaluate the target organization’s patient education delivery and streamline the education to improve bed turnaround time on a postnatal unit. A postpartum education checklist was developed and implemented across the length of stay of mother and baby. In lieu of the many challenges faced in delivery of care during the COVID-19 pandemic, the proposed education checklist improved workflow by reducing length of stay by more than one hour for the low-risk mothers and their newborns. In addition, quality care was demonstrated by improved nursing documentation of patient education in the electronic medical record of charts reviewed.