Standardized Patient Handoff

Electronic health records can lessen the disintegration of care by refining care coordination. The use of electronic health records will deliver providers with accurate information. This is especially important for those that see multiple specialists, and enable a smooth transition between care settings and receive treatment in emergency

Indeed, "new and validated knowledge that forms the basis j Y for evidence-based practice (EBP) most commonly is discovered in academic settings. But findings need to be translated into a protocol or guideline that can be used to guide practice," according to Conner, (2014, p.40). Evidence-based projects have lead to many improved clinical practice changes at the bedside and healthcare in general; and they are highly promoted and supported by different healthcare organizations.

It has been reported by various studies that most patient care errors occur during the handoff due to miscommunication between the caregivers and their reports regarding inaccurate information about the patient’s care, treatment and current condition.

Upon close examination, and the study of materials and data gathered, it was established that the breakdown of communication remains to be the main culprit in handoff deviations. One survey concluded that up to 59% of all participants had, at least, one patient who suffered from medical errors as a result of an ineffective handoff report (Barry, 2014). Many efforts are being expended to counter these instances; nevertheless, it seems that many of these issues persist to this date. Additionally, as stated above, over 70% of all adverse effects have to do with communication errors; a recent study indicates that approximately only 43.9% of all pertinent information gets relayed accurately to the care unit and that as much as 43% of all malpractice

Patient transport is a major activity within healthcare in the United Kingdom (UK). It includes both non-emergency patient transport services (NEPTS) and time critical emergency transfers that utilise medical staff to escort patients requiring higher level of care to a specialist tertiary centre. Transporting acutely unwell and critically ill patients has many risks and potentially puts such patients in jeopardy if they have not been assessed and stabilised appropriately prior to the transfer taking place. It is for this reason that transport medicine deserves greater recognition as a specialist service as it requires specifically trained staff that can intervene in an appropriate and timely manner to ensure that patient safety is

Thus, this literature review will be focusing on various themes on the effectiveness of bedside handover using ISBAR, which will then be compared and contrasted; and the most common barriers to effective bedside handover will be explored.

This mixed method of study set out to understand the nurses in a neonatal unit viewpoint of bedside handover. Although 22 nurses were invited only 16 responded to be included in the study. The Handover Evaluation Scale (HES) was used to gather data during this study. They focused on quality of information that was shared, nurse to nurse interaction, staff support during report time, and involvement of parents of the neonate during handoff time. The objectives during this study were to determine current practice in conjunction with current policy to understand how handover fulfills the goals of transfer of patient information, staff communication and support, and nurse education while measuring the differences, strengths and weaknesses,

Consistency amongst staff with patient handoff procedures is a critical step in increasing purposeful communication, positive patient outcomes, and top working relationships between healthcare professionals (Eberhardt, 2014). Barriers to quality and safety can be broken down through encouragement of staff to be vocal about particular safety concerns and though encouraging discussion, ideas, and solutions to such problems. A particular new idea to me that would be useful in a smaller unit is an action board, which allows anyone to write down a particular quality or safety problem (Steelman, 2014). Initially, the problem would be in red ink, which would alert the staff that this was a new problem. Then a staff member would be chosen to take

Early post-operative complications of the critically ill following major surgery can have devastating results (McElroy et al., 2015). These complications are mitigated by immediate detection and beginning of appropriate treatment or intervention (Hudson, McDonald, Hudson, Tran, & Boodhwani, 2015). These all require effective communication between the surgical and post-surgical team (Nagpal, Vats, Wong, Sevdalis, & Moorthy, 2012). The purpose of a handoff from the operating room (OR) to the intensive care unit (ICU), is to undertake and intermesh the physical transfer of the surgical patient with the knowledge of patient’s clinical information occurring from the surgical team to the accepting post-surgical team (McElroy et al, 2015).

Quantia, I agree patient handoff and report is imperative to positive patient outcomes. I also understand the reality of the actual experience and the many opportunities for distractions and missed communications during this part of patient care. The transferring of patient care must occur numerous times in a patients stay in the hospital or even just in the initial admission stage in the emergency department. For example, patients are transferred from the nurse’s care to various departments including medical imaging and ultimately from the emergency department to the floor for their stay in the hospital. My current organization recently mandated bedside report, nurse to nurse verbal report for all units and also implemented the use of SBARs

Bright’s condition began to decline the team elected to contact the doctor. When speaking with the doctor over the phone ISBAR was used to communicate both effectively and quickly. It has been found that using a handover tool such as or similar to ISBAR can greatly improve the quality of handover as discovered by Ramasubbu, Stewart and Spiritoso (2016, p. 20). Therefore, when the team contacted the doctor, utilizing a structured handover such as ISBAR greatly improved the quality of the handover, resulting in better communication thus resulting in a better patient outcome. By utilizing ISBAR the team arrived at the source of the problem (a haematoma) much faster than if no handover tool was

The abstract of the study clearly and concisely summarized the main features of the report. It stated that the study was conducted as a qualitative, ethnographic research. Then, it briefly described the problems associated with call bells and how these problems affected patients’ perceptions regarding the quality of care. It explained that the study identified three interrelated themes regarding communication through call bells including answering the call bell, communicating the patient’s request to the appropriate health care provider and following through with the

Effective communication is selective of the information comprising of current patient state being handed over between caregivers resulting in continuity and safety for the patient (Kear, 2016)Click and drag to move . Handoff ideas that are systematically reviewed and these aim at ensuring specific information encompassing patient safety is passed on. Different acronyms are used to help ease the handoff process. Kear 2016 highlighted SBAR (situation, background, assessment, recommendation, and patient); I PASS the BATON- Introduction, patient, assesment, situation, safety concerns,background,actions,timing,ownership,next; Five Ps- Patient,plan,purposeof plan, problem, precaution; Five Ps- patient, precautions, plan of care, problems, purpose. All these highlighted tools have similar realtime assement inquiries and most importantly assess for patient safety when taking

The information communicated during a hand-off must be accurate in order to meet safety goals.” To demonstrate the magnitude of this issue, Frishman, et al. showed that there are on average 5.2 hand-offs per day (Frishman, Nabors, Peterson 2013). It has become increasingly important to have formal educational curriculum dedicated to teaching how to best give and receive hand-offs. Issues involved in the development of such a curriculum include the fact that there is no universally adopted method or system for patient hand-offs. (Airan-Javia, Kogan, Smith, Lapin, Shea, Dine, Ishida, Myers 2012). There are a multitude of methods used in hand-offs such as paper, electronic and tools automatically generated from existing EMRs (Flanagan, Patterson, Frankel, et al. 2009). There are also a multitude of mnemonics that can be used to help facilitate and formalize the hand-off process. A current problem is that there have been few studies comparing different mnemonics and each type of hand-off model used. (Riesenberg, Leitzsch, Little 2009). There is consensus that using a standardized process improves the quality of hand-offs and that education of physicians helps them follow standardization (Wayne, Tyagi, Reinhardt, Rooney, Makoul, Chopra, Darosa 2008). A difficulty

This current problem correlates with other issues within the emergency department. A study was performed by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) demonstrating the six components of the evaluations of the quality of one’s care; Safety, effectiveness, patient centered care, efficiency, time, and equitability (Strang, Crotts, Johnson, Hartling, Guttman, 2015). The scope of my project involves training, education and changing the way our department interacts with arriving patients and the triaging process. The lack of specific tasks and communication in the triage area also lives. A dearth in communication has been directly linked to delays in patient care, medication errors, and lack of accountability (Sayah, Rogers, Devarajan, Kingsley-Rocker, Lobon, 2014). With the use of appropriate quick triage, communication, and transfer of patients one can implement targeted goals in triage (Craig et at., 2016).