Winning Poster: Transforming culture through a collaborative approach: Nurses and physicians dismantling bias to provide equitable care in a pediatric unit

Pediatric nurses are essential in advocating for equitable care for our diverse patient populations, including people of color, those with limited English proficiency, individuals with disabilities, patients experiencing poverty, and those who identify as LGBTQIA+. The 26-bed pediatric unit practices family-centered rounds, aiming to respect and provide equal experiences through transparency and collaboration with families. This approach empowers parents to engage in shared, informed decision-making with the medical team regarding their child's healthcare needs. To better meet the needs of our underserved patients, the physician team, in collaboration with nursing staff, developed the Health Equity Check-In Tool. This tool facilitates a pre-round meeting among Attending Physicians, Residents, Interns, and Charge RNs to discuss any potential barriers in providing equitable care. After family-centered rounds, the team reconvenes to discuss how to improve communication and education for all families. Before implementing this tool, unit leadership surveyed all charge nurses to evaluate their perceptions of how effectively equitable care was provided. In our pre-survey results, charge nurses felt that patients on our floor received equitable care occasionally or very frequently. When asked how comfortable charge nurses felt identifying and discussing health inequities the answers varied from extremely uncomfortable to extremely comfortable. When asked how comfortable nurses felt discussing health inequities in current roles, the answers varied from extremely uncomfortable to extremely comfortable. The goal in using the Health Equity Check-In Tool is to identify any potential implicit biases and manage those, focus on social determinants of health, and to provide medical updates in patients in their preferred spoken language. All patients and families deserve and need access to health care resources especially during a hospital stay. The plan is to continue using the Health Equity Check-In Tool daily in the unit and to conduct a post-survey for the charge nurses in January when unit leadership will collect and review our data.