For our project, my group decided to focus on the importance of accurately documenting intake and output. Since our clinical rotation this semester was on a cardiac floor, this issue was especially prevalent due to the number of patients who were admitted because of a heart failure exacerbation and/or were being diuresed because of a fluid volume overload. We noticed that this was an issue based on the key performance indicator posted on the bulletin board in the break room of the floor. We thought of ways we could attempt to improve this issue however we noticed a lot of barriers to being able to accurately document a patient’s intake and output. One of them being the fact that the patients on our floor were very independent and could easily use the bathroom/drink water without the nurses realizing. 

In order to overcome these barriers, we thought it would be best to educate the nurses on these barriers and some suggestions to overcome them. We would also educate them on the importance of accurate intake and output documenting and how it could help their patients and the healthcare team. Findings through this project could influence our nursing practice by helping us along with the other nurses on the floor to identify barriers related to accurate intake and output documentation. This project will also educate us on how to overcome the barriers once we begin our nursing careers in order to better document for our patients and the healthcare team. 

Our team was successful in identifying one of the main issues on our clinical floor and how we could help through education. I have noticed that as a group we have good communication skills and are able to evenly distribute work among members even with very different schedules. We use our time on clinical to observe our nurses and gather data about barriers and the importance of accurate documentation of intake and output. With this, we are able to report back to each other in order to make this project have more relevant and interesting information for our floor. In order to evaluate our methods, we will be conducting a survey before and after our intervention to see nurse’s confidence levels in correct documentation of intake and output, what they understand about barriers of accurate documentation and what they can do as nurses in order to overcome them.