Patient participation in bedside reporting on surgical wards

Increasingly nowadays, patients have an opportunity to take part in nurses' reporting sessions via bedside reporting. The aim of this study was to compare nurses' and patients' opinions of the purpose of bedside reports, patient participation in bedside reporting sess ions, and factors that promote or prevent their participation. Data were collected by a questionnaire survey of nurses (N = 118) and patie nts (N = 74). A response rate of 81% was achieved in both groups. Additiona lly, 76 bedside reporting sessions were observed. According to patients, the main reasons for not participating were tirednes s, difficulties in formulating questions, lack of encouragement, difficulti es with the language used, nurses concentrating more on their papers than o n them, and the reporting sessions were too short. Nurses reported that patients took a more active part in reporting sessions than patients themselves thought. The average time spent on each patient's report was three minutes.