Systematic Evaluation of the Effect of Bedside Ward Round Checklist on Clinical Outcomes of Critical Patients

OBJECTIVE: To systematically evaluate the effect of bedside ward round checklists on the clinical outcomes of critical patients and thus provide a scientific and rational basis for decision-making in its clinical application. METHODS: PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, CNKI, and Wanfang databases were searched to collect the literature studies about randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and cohort studies involving the effect of bedside ward round checklists on the clinical outcomes of critical patients, and the retrieval time limit was from the establishment of the database to August 2019. After two researchers independently screened the literature studies, extracted the literature data, and evaluated the risk of bias in included studies, meta-analysis was carried out by using Stata 12.0 software. RESULTS: Two RCTs and nine cohort studies were included in this study. The results of meta-analysis showed that compared with the ordinary bedside ward round, the application of checklist in bedside ward round could shorten the ICU hospitalization time (standardized mean difference (SMD) = – 0.37, 95% CI (– 0.78, 0.04), P ≤ 0.001) and mechanical ventilation time (SMD = – 0.24, 95% CI (– 0.44, −0.04), P = 0.037) and reduce the incidence of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) (SMD = 0.61, 95% CI (0.38, 0.99), P = 0.057) in critical patients. However, there were no significant differences in central venous catheter (CVC) retention time and incidence and mortality of deep venous thrombosis (DVT) between ordinary ward round and bedside ward round checklist. CONCLUSION: The existing evidence shows that compared with the ordinary ward round, the application of bedside ward round checklists can shorten ICU hospitalization time and mechanical ventilation time and reduce VAP incidence and ICU mortality in critical patients. However, due to the limitations of the quality of the included studies, the above conclusions need to be verified with more high-quality studies.