What are Nurses' Perceptions of Unit Huddles?
Abstract
The terminology unit huddle is starting to become a familiar term in hospitals and health care settings. Huddles are described as a 5-10 minute concise gathering of a functional group. Huddles provide opportunities to increase patient safety, improve communication, and improve hospital quality scores. However, for unit huddles to be successful staff such as nurses must participate in huddles. Without nurses participating unit huddles will not work correctly. This thesis looks at nurses’ perceptions of unit huddles. When reviewing literature regarding huddles many articles in the search yielded very little empirical data. Much of the literature that was used read as stories instead of showing specific data results. The main purpose of the thesis was looking at nurses’ perceptions of unit huddles at a small rural hospital. The research method utilized for this study was a descriptive and exploratory study using quantitative method with a ten-question questionnaire. The ten-question survey was emailed out via survey monkey to the critical care unit, emergency department, medical/surgical, telemetry, and obstetrics units. Results overall showed nurses had favorable perceptions about unit huddles and the impact they make on the units.