Patient Hand-Off Communication Analysis

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Criscitelli (2013) explored strategies for patient hand-offs in the perioperative setting that encourages patient safety to be at the forefront of care. Effective patient hand-off communication is about disseminating accurate patient information from one healthcare professional to another (Criscitelli, 2013). During the surgical experience communication is at high risk for breakdown, one way to prevent breakdown would be to standardize patient hand-off by written and verbal checklists (Criscitelli, 2013). The development of realistic and easy to use patient hand-off checklist will increase patient safety and satisfaction, and decrease sentinel events (Criscitelli, 2013). Criscitelli (2013) proposes that the implementation and evaluation of standardized patient hand-off checklists must be performed by members of the intraoperative setting that actively use them, by administrators, and by an objective third party to determine the efficacy of the newly adopted system. …show more content…
The tool, called SWITCH for safety, uses key topics in written form with a subset of questions beneath each topic to provide accurate and up-to-date information regarding patient care (Johnson et al., 2013). Johnson et al. (2013) found that when the SWITCH for safety tool is visible to all team members in the operating room there were fewer adverse events in patient safety. The standardization of a patient hand-off sheet in institutions involved in the study maintained lower rates of wrong-site, wrong-patient surgery, fewer retained objects, and greater patient and employee satisfaction (Johnson et al., 2013). Johnson et al. (2013) found that 87% of participants said that the SWITCH tool was easy to use and 97% determined it was important for maintaining patient safety in the intraoperative