Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To develop a symptom assessment tool to assist health care providers with discussing bowel habits in a sensitive and accurate method. DESIGN: Pre and Post education survey. SETTING: 180 bed academically affiliated Veterans Affairs Hospital. PARTICIPANTS: Nurses, nursing assistants and physicians who participated in a brief educational session. METHODS: A Bowel Habits Assessment Tool (BHAT) was developed to assist health care providers in learning skills to assess patient bowel habits accurately. The BHAT was introduced at educational sessions. An anonymous pre and post survey employing a 5-point Likert scale was administered to participants. RESULTS: Pre-educational session survey results for Question 1 (Q1) "I am comfortable discussing patient's bowel habits included: 4.6% strongly disagreed or somewhat disagreed, 3% neither agreed nor disagreed, 20% somewhat agreed and 72.3% strongly agreed. After the BHAT education, 100% (n=65) of participants strongly agreed or somewhat agreed that they were comfortable discussing patient's bowel habits. Q1 pre/post mean difference 0.25 (CI 0.06539 - 0.4269, p = 0.0084). On the pre-survey, only 34% of participants strongly agreed that they were aware of tools to help discuss patients' bowel habits. This increased to 77% after the BHAT educational session. (Q2). Q2 pre/post mean difference 1.02 (CI 0.7366 - 1.294, p <0.0001). CONCLUSIONS: The BHAT improved clinicians' comfort level discussing patient's bowel habits. Health care providers found the BHAT useful and related to their work. This tool shows promise in improving providers' comfort discussing bowel habits and diagnosing Clostridioides difficile in a timely manner.