Comfort Rounds Volunteer Program: Enhancing Volunteer Engagement & Retention

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2019

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University of Hawaii at Manoa

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Falls continues to be one of the most preventable adverse events in the hospital and in the home setting. Falls prevention programs have not significantly reduced falls or falls risk. Hourly rounding and comfort care rounding have shown some promise to reduce the risk for falls. However, most programs require the medical care team to do hourly rounding. Queen’s Medical Center (QMC) implemented a pilot program called comfort rounds (CR) where volunteers rounded hourly while providing comfort care. The CR program achieved the goal of reducing falls to zero when the CR volunteers were on the floor. After the initial success of the program, QMC was faced with the problem of training and providing enough volunteers to continue the program’s success. QMC quickly saw the need to implement volunteer engagement and retention strategies. In order to continue the success of the comfort rounds program, the purpose of this evidence-based practice (EBP) quality improvement project focused on engaging and retaining CR volunteers. This project implemented two interventions using empowerment and leadership engagement strategies to increase volunteer retention. The volunteers’ feedback forms were reviewed and indicated an increase in volunteer engagement and retention. The primary challenges were (a) to continually engage CR volunteers with opportunities that will benefit their future and (b) dedicate and establish a manager to lead and take ownership of the program. This Project suggests further efforts be placed on determining what volunteers see as beneficial and offering other volunteer engagement strategies such as networking, expert shadowing opportunities and patient population expansion.

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Nursing

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