Improving the Timing of Laboratory Studies in Hospitalized Children: A Quality Improvement Study.

Objectives: For hospitalized children and their families, laboratory study collection at night and in the early morning interrupts sleep and increases the stress of a hospitalization. To change this practice, our quality improvement (QI) study developed a rounding checklist aimed at increasing the percentage of routine laboratory studies ordered for and collected after 7 am.

Methods: Our QI study was conducted on the pediatric hospital medicine service at a single-site urban children's hospital over 28 months.