Importance Of Patient Handover

Introduction

In order to safely deliver competent care, a nurse must be armed with all of the pertinent information about a patient. Breakdowns in communication have been known to cause adverse and sentinel events, making it extremely important for nurses to pass on relevant information at shift change in a timely manner. Although no known best practice currently exists for communication during patient handovers, various strategies have been implemented and studied. One strategy to attempt to improve the quality and delivery of end of shift report in a timely manner includes the employment of a standardized template to complement verbal patient handovers. In an experimental study by Wilson (2007), she implied that the initiation of a standardized

Increasing the amount of information the nurse assuming care of the patient possess, while decreasing the amount of time to deliver report may improve the quality of care delivered and prevent adverse events. However, standardizing verbal handovers stands as an exceedingly difficult intervention to implement due to the fact that nurses’ personalize the manner in which they deliver patient handovers. Altering the framework of delivering a verbal handover also forces nursing staff to alter the manner in which they process information and deliver it to one another. Therefore, education and time is necessary for an intervention such as altering the patient handover process. Lewin’s model for change, which involves the steps of unfreezing, moving, and refreezing, will be utilized throughout the initiation of the intervention. By utilizing a standardized template to complement verbal patient handovers, the amount of time required to deliver a comprehensive report may decrease. Hopefully standardizing the manner in which medical staff, especially nurses, communicate will encourage the elimination of gaps in patient handovers and decrease errors with causes rooted in poor

Non-comprehensive and non-uniform patient handovers stand as a current concern within the department. Inadequate handovers may lead to delays in care and communication errors. Additionally, poor communication and poor teamwork in relation to handovers pose a threat to patient safety. The proposed intervention is to implement the utilization of a paper, SBAR formatted, standardized template with patient information on it that can be passed on from nurse to nurse at shift change. The template will be updated throughout the patient’s stay at the facility and will help provide a comprehensive view of the patient. This SBAR formatted template will provide the framework for the verbal report given during patient handovers on medical-surgical units of a Midwestern, rural hospital. The review of the literature supports the implementation of this intervention, by noting error reduction with the employment of a template. The results of a study by Triplett and Schuveiller (2011) suggested that over half of the nurses surveyed had discovered errors during the patient handover process with the addition of the template. According to Johnson, Jefferies, and Nicholls, (2012) not only did the employment of a template complement verbal handover, but it also provided a tool to allow for easy access to comprehensive information on any given patient in the units. Overall, the