Bedside Reporting In Nursing

Hand off reporting is the transfer of care of one patient from one nurse to another. During report, the nurse gives the oncoming nurse information about a patient’s health status, changes during their shift, pending labs or diagnostic tests, and overall relevant information regarding the patient’s condition and how it is being managed. During this time, the oncoming nurse has the opportunity to ask questions, clarify, or address any concerns that weren’t mentioned such as IVs and medications. The real question that we ask ourselves is, what is better practice, hand off reporting (patient is nowhere near the nurses during report), or bedside reporting, where report is being given in front of the patient? There are many articles and statistics

Communication is key in almost every possible setting in the health care field, whether you are the patient or the healthcare professional. Communication helps prevent medical errors and has an impact on the overall outcome of the patient’s health. About eighty percent of medical malpractice lawsuits were due to lack of proper communication which contributed to patient harm (Vines, Dupler, Van Son & Guido, 2014). The study inspires for there to be a change from hand off reporting outside of a patient’s room, to a more involved bedside reporting where the patient and their families are being included and thoroughly comprehending their treatment plan. The purpose of the paper is to further investigate the difference between bedside reporting and hand offs and its effect on patient outcome. It is intended to use evidenced based research to identify which approach is more effective to not only the client, but their family as

As those key words were entered, thousands of useful articles popped up. In order to refine my search, a couple of settings were altered. I only wanted peer reviewed nursing journals that were less than five years old because I wanted to use the most recent data when preparing for my research, therefore, I searched only for articles from 2013-2018 and clicked on the option of academic peer reviews journals which further decreased the search results. The article that primarily answered the questions that were of main concern was Bedside Shift Report: Implications for Patient Safety and Quality Care. It offered an overview on the importance of bedside reporting and the impact it has on the patient’s overall health and recovery process. It provided statistical data on the number of patients that have suffered complications due to medical mistakes that arose from hand off reporting. They offered information on what should occur in order to ensure that bedside reporting will deliver successful patient outcomes (Ofori-Atta, Binienda, & Chalupka,