Improving Nurse-to-Nurse Handoff

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Seventy percent of errors or sentinel events are attributed to poor communication during nurse handoff (Small et al., 2016). One identified barrier to poor communication is a standardized process for handoff (Stewart, 2017). Since communication is the foundation of patient care, it is crucial to provide accurate, up-to-date information in a timely manner to the oncoming nurse. The purpose of this project was to implement bedside nurse-to-nurse handoff reports using a standardized tool, the SBAR tool. This implementation took place in the emergency department, a complex environment where information can easily be miscommunicated or omitted due to the chaos of the setting. However, nurse-to-nurse handoff is significant in every department and should be consistent. Posters were placed in the department to remind staff of the SBAR tool.