Pilot study: Assessing the effect of continual position monitoring technology on compliance with patient turning protocols

AIM: The study aim was to evaluate if continual patient position monitoring, taking into account self‐turns and clinician‐assisted turns, would increase the percentage of time a patient's position changed at least every 2 hr. BACKGROUND: While patient turning has clinical benefits, current models to help staff remember to turn patients, such as “turn clocks” and timers, have not resulted in high compliance with turning protocols. In addition, reminders are based on arbitrary 2‐hr windows (such as turning on “even” hours) rather than on individual patient activity, including self‐turns. DESIGN: This is a first inpatient, non‐randomized, pre‐/postintervention study. METHODS: Data collection occurred from May 2013–February 2014 on a 39‐bed medical unit in a community hospital. Baseline patient turning data were recorded by a sensor; however, the patient data were not displayed at the nurses’ station to establish compliance with the hospital's turning protocol. Postintervention, patient position information was wirelessly displayed on nurses’ station computer monitors in real time. A Student t test was used to compare baseline to postintervention “mean time in compliance.” RESULTS: Data from 138 patients (N = 7,854 hr of monitoring) were collected. The baseline phase yielded 4,322 hr of position monitoring data and the postintervention phase yielded 3,532 hr of data. Statistically significant improvement was demonstrated in the percentage of time a patient's position changed at least every 2 hr from baseline to postintervention.