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Change Of Shift In Nursing

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Change of shift is a busy time at the hospital. Nurses and techs who have cared for patients on the outgoing shift meet with those who will care for the patients for the next shift and give updates. This communication is often done as a meeting in a room or area that is away from the patients. Much thought has been given to implementing bedside nursing shift reports as a way to improve nursing satisfaction, reduce patient falls, and reduce medication errors. Although this method has been researched and reported in previous papers, those papers seemed lacking in data on sample sizes and rarely calculated statistical significance of the study results. The article used as a basis for this paper addressed these deficits seen in previous papers …show more content…

Literature reporting on bedside nursing handoffs in recent years has shown such benefits as patient satisfaction improvement, better communication among nurses, and less time needed to complete change of shift reports. These all seem like positive outcomes, but I see several areas that might be concerning in bedside reports. Patient privacy must be respected, and two-patient rooms do not provide for this privacy. Second, nurses may not want to share some of the information in the change of shift report with the …show more content…

The most common response was they received good care and that the nurses were caring and professional. The second most common response was in regard to the bedside reporting. Patients felt that bedside reporting had not been used or had been used ineffectively because the only thing done was introduction of the nurse coming on for the next shift. In the third most common response, patients felt the nurses had provided complete information and explained things well. Little negative response was noted. Nurses had positive comments at baseline, less positive at three-month interval, and positive again at 13-months. Answers to survey questions indicated that the nurses felt bedside reporting allowed the patient to be more involved in care and assured accountability. At 13 months postimplementation the perception that reasonable amounts of time were spend in bedside reporting were much more positive. Patient fall data showed a decrease in falls and medication errors after implementation of the bedside reporting. But, the facility implemented a new patient incident reporting system after the initial baseline study. Therefore, no data could be collected for the study for the three-month and 13-month intervals. Although there was some concern about an increase in overtime for the nurses because of the new way of doing report, no data showed

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