Improving Handoff Communication

Tabitha walked onto the medical-surgical unit and received report on five patients in a record ten minutes before she began her busy shift Tuesday morning. The off going nurse managed to talk about the pet peeves and subjectives of each patient but was in a rush to make it to the monthly nursing practice council meeting and ‘everyone is doing fine’. Tabitha was unaware of the potential chaos that would ensue as her day progressed. As Tabitha walked into her patients’ rooms that morning to introduce herself, little did she know that Mrs. Jones is a high fall risk with no signage or alarms plugged in; Mr. Hill has fluids infusing at one hundred and fifty milliliters per hour with a history of congestive heart failure (CHF); and another patient is scheduled for surgery with no pre-operative paperwork or consents completed.
In the nursing profession, communication is a tool to be used effectively in shift-to-shift report to ensure continuity of care and patient safety (Matic, Davidson, & Salamonson, 2010, p. 184). Benson, Rippin-Sisler, Jabusch, and Keast (2007) explain “for a report to be meaningful, the information passed along to the receiver must be done in a way that is effective and efficient; otherwise, the point of communicating the information may be lost” (p. 80). The Joint Commission (TJC) defines barriers in communication as a leading threat to patient safety (Matic et al., 2010, p. 185). Patient safety and continuity of care can be maintained by implementing a handoff communication tool and bedside nurse-to-nurse handoff.
Without a defined tool for handoff communication, the information shared depends on the nurse giving report, time allotted for report, and distractions at report time. Benson et al. (2007) gives gui...

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...when attempting to rise from bed, Mr. Hill may not have experienced fluid overload, and the surgical patient’s handoff would have gone smoothly with the pre-op nurse.

References
Benson, E., Rippin-Sisler, C., Jabusch, K., & Keast, S. (2007). Improving nursing shift-to-shift report. Journal Of Nursing Care Quality, 22(1), 80-84.
Evans, D., Grunawat, J., McClish, D., Wood, W., & Friese, C. R. (2012). Bedside shift-to-shift nursing report: Implementation and outcomes. MEDSURG Nursing, 21(5), 281-292.
Matic, J., Davidson, P., & Salamonson, Y. (2011). Review: Bringing patient safety to the forefront through structured computerization during clinical handover. Journal Of Clinical Nursing, 20(1/2), 184-189.
Maxson, P. M., Derby, K. M., Wrobleski, D. M., & Foss, D. M. (2012). Bedside nurse-to-nurse handoff promotes patient safety. MEDSURG Nursing, 21(3), 140-145.