The Baycrest Hospital inpatient unit staff members have relaunched their performance and idea board huddles. This relaunch supports Baycrest’s focus on continuous quality improvement across all programs by performance reporting at the point of service to provide an exceptional healthcare experience to our clients and families.

During the huddles, teams have the opportunity to make a connection between unit initiatives, as well as priorities outlined in Baycrest’s Quality Improvement Plan and Baycrest’s Strategic Plan.

The huddles involve reviewing performance and idea boards. At the performance board, staff members review measures that they select for their unit. Examples include client falls, pressure injury prevention, medication management and client experience survey results. The performance boards present a visual tool to help staff understand unit performance over time.

At the idea board, staff openly share, prioritize and implement ideas in the form of “tickets.” Through both boards, staff can identify improvement opportunities regarding the quality of care being delivered.

Haniah Ahmed, a clinical extern at Baycrest, says the huddles “bridge the world of nursing and hospital management” by allowing an “interdisciplinary team to work together to make decisions to improve the unit.”

Registered nurse Oxana Bratseiko says, “As nurses who are very busy and have a lot of great ideas, the huddle is a great opportunity for us to share and discuss the many ideas we have and put them into action.”

Huddles are interprofessional and last 15 minutes. Staff who are physically not on the unit can join the huddle remotely by connecting to a telemedicine cart (T-cart) device via Zoom. The huddles are co-facilitated by leaders on the unit, such as the clinical manager, advanced practice nurse and team leaders. All huddles end with an opportunity to recognize peers on the team and celebrate ongoing events.

“As a team, it’s so important to have protected time to discuss what we want to improve,” says Pooja Arora, a physiotherapist at Baycrest. “We can take charge and own the processes we suggest. It feels good to see all of us engaged in leading improvement initiatives and supporting each other in designing and implementing solutions.”