Standardized Patient Handoff

Telemedicine is split up into three categories: store-and-forward, remote monitoring, and real-time interactive services. In store-and-forward telemedicine, medical data is transmitted to be stored at an intermediary device before being forwarded to the physician. In remote monitoring telemedicine, physicians can monitor a patient’s condition using a variety of technological devices. Real-time interactive telemedicine can provide real-time interactions between patients and physicians, such as phone calls and video calls. This is comparable to an in-person clinical visit, except for the fact that is online.

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.

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

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

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).

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

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,

Patient hand-offs have become an integral part of patient care throughout the continuum of medical care. Patient hand-offs occur anytime in the care of a patient that one provider is “handing off” the responsibility of care from one’s self to another provider. During this time a lot of important information must be conveyed clearly and succinctly specifically because the human brain can absorb and retain only so much information at one time. This issue is even more important since the implementation of ACGME work hour restrictions which has led to more hand-offs occurring than ever before. During each and every hand-off there is risk for errors. Therefore, there needs to be further research into the methods and

Two diverse surveys were created and labeled A and B. The targeted hospital community was nurses, charge nurses, new graduates, certified nurses, and other medical professionals. Survey A was produced for all medical professional to receive hospital-specific information about the rapid response system by its main operators. Survey A consisted of seven different questions on the current rapid response system effectiveness, how to make the resource more efficient, any barriers, more education to implement, reasoning for calling, and using a nurse as a consultation. This particular survey generated 40 replies from different medical professionals within the hospital.

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

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

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

Telemedicine is the extension of eHealth. The consultation by phone has become a routine in primary health care. The practice nurses should be provided with the educational support in order to cope up with the situations in this area. In order to continue professional development for practice nurses Telephone consultation skills are obligatory. To improve quality of care Practices should implement a process of evaluating telephone calls and auditing outcomes. (Andrews,

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).