Handoff Communication In Nursing: Importance And Strategies For Improving Patient Safety

Goal statement

Handoff Communication In Nursing Can Be Defined As Joint Communication In National Patient Safety Goals Aimed At Helping Correct Medical Errors Which May Occur Due To  Miscommunication in the invents of transfers and handoffs. The project initiated in 2006 in the United States of America.  and the purpose of this research paper is to investigate how hand-off communication through the joint commission in NPSG helps to ensure critical health care for patients in the hospital  delivered. Therefore, the goal of this research proposal is to examine how JCI has helped to improve patient safety through hand-off communication strategy. For example, the attention given to the handoff communication by World Health Organization and Common Wealth Fund has helped to improve the safety of the patient. Additionally, this paper examines the High 5’s project created through the collaboration of the WHO together with Common Wealth Fund helps in the creation of a solution to the five communication-based problems, one being the handoff communication (Bigham et al., 2014).

Moreover, other four communication-based problem includes wrong surgeries, hand hygiene, continuous medical errors as well as the high medical error concentration. Through research of different hospital, the paper will seek to come up with preventive solutions as well as strategies. Later on, the knowledge from the research paper can be shared with other countries  to help improve their health care centers. The paper will adopt joint communication format. The form includes an objective statement which is crucial when choosing the international patient safety goals dedicated to handoff communication.

Therefore, the proposal strives to ensure that severe injuries, as well as unexpected patient death caused by poor communication, are reduced. Moreoverthe research focuses on the all healthcare and service delivery. This health centers  includepatient movement from one location to another around the hospital, information transfer and shift to shift handoff within the same unit (Abraham et al., 2017 p 144).

Consequently, the growing body of literature indicates that a bigger population worldwide is being affected by the poor handoff communication taking place within the hospital.  The research paper targets approximately 200 health workers found in different hospitals within Australia. Additionally, the propels aims at reaching close to 700 patients discovered in the hospital as well as those suffering in their residential areas (Feraco et al., 2016, p 531).

As a result of the problems cited earlier, this paper pursues to address different ways in how the implementation of handoff communication contributes in helping the government, organization as well as health workers and other international agencies concerned with the fight for patient safety through effective implementation of handoff communication in various hospitals. The objective of this research can be categorized as follows

Project Objective

To develop as well as implement an operative handoff communication plan and policy

To ensure that there is effective communication through implementation and utilization of check back methods or technologies

To come up with technology to enhance communication. For example, timely as well as efficient transmission of patient data can be easily supported by electronic methods of communication.

Additionally, to ensure that there is the adequate completion of the project, the research seeks to come up with the following steps.

Understanding all the physical as well as informational handoffs available within the area of practice such as duration where any two members of team exchange information concerning the patient.

For practical completion of the projects, a better understanding of the various types of transition that is currently occurring is vital. For example, the handoff process to be determined includes who the sender is, what the recipient will receive and many other activities (Starmer et al., 2017).

Everyone involved in the transition must have a well-defined workflow. Formal mapping process can be one of the best ways to be used to map the workflow process. Informal mapping process; observation is done for each worker during the entire workday or a portion of the workday. During the remark, a record should be done on what the worker has done, where they had done it as well as when they did it.

After analyzing the current workflows, propose a new operator that can suit all the members including the team members affected with the previous workflow. After reaching n agreement with all the staff, establish the new workflows.

After identification of different transition points, the research pursues to come up with solutions that ensure that patient engagement as well as safety. For example, the study proposes that the staff member whose room hosted the patient should hand-off the patient to the clinician in person with the patient present. Therefore, the patient can clarify the information that the clinician gets from the team members in charge of the patient (Di Delupis et al., 2014, p 582).

According to Benjamin et al. (2016), handoffs have created distinct and significant communication gaps, errors and omission gaps regarding patient care. In fact, the author is advocating for computerization of the communication handoff in patient care as a prompt measure to assist hospital to curb the emerging problems. This study also provides conclusive information which shows that verbal handoff plays a significant role and thus, serves not only as information transfer source but also forms the basis functions in the healthcare provision. Despite, the importance of handoff healthcare program in the hospitals, there is inadequate research and patient-centered information on how to implement the plan successfully.

Finding patient transition points

Handoff communication also gives absolute control and responsibility whenever a transfer occurs in the critical health care docket. Therefore, handoff health care will assist in decision-making situations even with little alteration of the information. This will help in minimizing time-consuming as well as reduces instances which might lead to adverse consequences. Handoff communication entails transfer situation and strong adherence to the legal responsibility which nurses and physicians must tackle in their line of duty (Colvin et al., 2016, February).

According to Patton et al. (2017, p 52), patient handoffs entails transferring of the medical healthcare provisions from one provider to the other. Both Poor quality and incomplete patients’ handoffs are some of the adverse implications which are encountered in the healthcare field. Thus, standardization of the process is essential to increase and improve care transitions of the patients. The first implementation program for the handoff proposal was brought into action by Joint Commission’s National Patient Safety through the use of standardized methodology, and this took place in 2006. However, the introduction of the standardized approach has resulted in advance complications which include fatigue and thus, has led to increased unintended consequences witnessed among patients.

Furthermore, there are different patient handoffs types which are used in critical healthcare unit. For instance, there is the use of handoffs in the either recovery or ICU ward as well as the application of the technique in the recovery ward by the surgeons. Nevertheless, different checklists can cover the handoffs but not limited to the surgical subspecialty. This literature, therefore, shows that there is lack of proper tool or checklist made approvals which can be used for transferring the residents while the patients are in the recovery. Therefore, the literature encourages the use of face-to-face and verbal handoffs (Abraham et al., 2014, p 202).

Lack of proper standardization in the BHW nursing is a major limitation which affects the handoff process in the healthcare. In recent days, the shift in the handoff communication has resulted into three key methodologies and these which include verbal, written reports as well as taped. However, there is a limitation in dealing with the handoff dataset since the policy department in the nursing sector hasn’t established a standard mechanism of compiling the information. Thus, lack of proper mechanism has increased handoff errors in different areas and hence risking the safety of patients (Clarke et al., 2017, p 875).

Examining and appraising the project, it is important to employ two key techniques which include primary and secondary methods. In essence, all the changes regarding the information omissions will be evaluated for one month. The one-month period will also cater for the post-intervention measures, and it will be determined using direct observation method. Additionally, it is important to examine the teamwork score, and this will be done using quantitative analysis which will include interviews and administered questionnaires. The quantitative should be conducted in the intensive care unit and must be done after the implementation of the intervention and should take one month. Also, the post-intervention analysis should take one month, and the process mainly aims at evaluating the changes in the length of stay of patients. Furthermore, the process should be conducted in the hospital and the intensive care unit during the post-intervention period. Finally, it is important to evaluate qualitative implementation outcomes changes to assess and ascertain appropriateness, acceptability, and fidelity of the result and should be done in one month (Gagnier et al. 2016,p 370).

Understanding present handoff process

It is important to establish different resources which one will need for the project. Some of the resources include human-ship who will assist in data collection; also it is essential to work on an intensive care unit which will be used for pre and post-intervention analysis. Furthermore, it is important to embark on literature research using, “The Joint Commission’s Web site (Vanderbilt et al., 2017).”

Evaluating the progress of the project using formative evaluation is important. In the process, it will be important to examine the techniques for qualitative and quantitative approaches of compiling data as well as literature reviews. This will be conducted after one month once the critical healthcare project kicks off (Benjamin et al., 2016).

The summative evaluation will be carried out once the data collected and mathematical statistics are compiled. It involves reporting the means as well as percentage scores of the pre- and post-implementation pilot studies. The process will also include giving qualitative feedback of the patients, and this dataset must be grouped thematically. Therefore, handoff communication timeframe will be estimated using linear regression modeling, and this ensures that there is control in the number of patients at each handoff stage (Quinn et al., 2016).

References

Abraham, J., Kannampallil, T. G., & Patel, V. L. (2014, June). Towards an ontology for interdisciplinary handoff communication in intensive care: implications for tool resiliency and patient safety. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Human Factors and Ergonomics in Health Care(Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 196-202). Sage India: New Delhi, India: SAGE Publications.

Abraham, J., Kannampallil, T. G., Srinivasan, V., Galanter, W. L., Tagney, G., & Cohen, T. (2017). Measuring content overlap during handoff communication using distributional semantics: An exploratory study. Journal of biomedical informatics, 65, 132-144.

Benjamin, M. F., Hargrave, S., & Nether, K. (2016). Using the Targeted Solutions Tool® to Improve Emergency Department Handoffs in a Community Hospital. The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, 42(3), 107-AP4.

Benjamin, M. F., Hargrave, S., & Nether, K. (2016). Using the Targeted Solutions Tool® to Improve Emergency Department Handoffs in a Community Hospital. The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, 42(3), 107-AP4.

Bigham, M. T., Logsdon, T. R., Manicone, P. E., Landrigan, C. P., Hayes, L. W., Randall, K. H., … & Williams, C. I. (2014). Decreasing handoff-related care failures in children’s hospitals. Pediatrics, 134(2), e572-e579.

Clarke, C. N., Patel, S. H., Day, R. W., George, S., Sweeney, C., De Oca, G. A. M., … & Bodurka, D. C. (2017). Implementation of a standardized electronic tool improves compliance, accuracy, and efficiency of trainee-to-trainee patient care handoffs after complex general surgical oncology procedures. Surgery, 161(3), 869-875.

Colvin, M. O., Eisen, L. A., & Gong, M. N. (2016, February). Improving the patient handoff process in the intensive care unit: Keys to reducing errors and improving outcomes. In Seminars in respiratory and critical care medicine(Vol. 37, No. 01, pp. 096-106). Thieme Medical Publishers.

Di Delupis, F. D., Pisanelli, P., Di Luccio, G., Kennedy, M., Tellini, S., Nenci, N., … & Gensini, G. F. (2014). Communication during handover in the pre-hospital/hospital interface in Italy: from evaluation to implementation of multidisciplinary training through high-fidelity simulation. Internal and emergency medicine, 9(5), 575-582.

Feraco, A. M., Starmer, A. J., Sectish, T. C., Spector, N. D., West, D. C., & Landrigan, C. P. (2016). Reliability of Verbal Handoff Assessment and Handoff Quality Before and After Implementation of a Resident Handoff Bundle. Academic pediatrics, 16(6), 524-531.

Gagnier, J. J., Derosier, J. M., Maratt, J. D., Hake, M. E., & Bagian, J. P. (2016). Development, implementation and evaluation of a patient handoff tool to improve safety in orthopaedic surgery. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 28(3), 363-370.

Patton, L. J., Tidwell, J. D., Falder-Saeed, K. L., Young, V. B., Lewis, B. D., & Binder, J. F. (2017). Ensuring safe transfer of pediatric patients: A quality improvement project to standardize handoff communication. Journal of Pediatric Nursing, 34, 44-52.

Quinn, M., Alsop, S., Velasquez, T., Bodinet, A., Smith, M., & Flood, S. (2016). Introduction of “Comfort Card” In Perioperative Area to Improve Patient Experience and Nursing Communication. Journal of PeriAnesthesia Nursing, 31(4), e3-e4.

Starmer, A. J., Schnock, K. O., Lyons, A., Hehn, R. S., Graham, D. A., Keohane, C., & Landrigan, C. P. (2017). Effects of the I-PASS Nursing Handoff Bundle on communication quality and workflow. BMJ Qual Saf, bmjqs-2016.

Vanderbilt, A. A., Pappada, S. M., Stein, H., Harper, D., & Papadimos, T. J. (2017). Increasing patient safety with neonates via handoff communication during delivery: a call for interprofessional health care team training across GME and CME. Advances in medical education and practice, 8, 365.

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