Handover between anaesthetists and post-anaesthetic care unit nursing staff using ISBAR principles: A quality improvement study

Refining nursing assessment and management with a new postanaesthetic care discharge tool to minimize surgical patient risk

“…It should be emphasized that handovers in the three PACUs included in our study had high levels of inclusion of individual elements of ISOBAR, with only one element below 85% at baseline. This finding is in contrast to another recent Australian study (Kitney et al., ) that found poorer compliance with Identification (79.8%) Background (27.6 to 30.6%), Assessment (53.5% to 95.5%), and Recommendation or request (51.1% to 76.2%); however, Kitney et al. were exploring handover from anaesthetists to nurses.…”

“…International research on structured communication practices in the perioperative setting has focused on handover between anaesthetists, or handover from the anaesthetist to PACU staff (Boat & Spaeth, ; Botti et al., ; Bourdon, ; Coleman, Redley, Wood, Bucknall, & Botti, ; Dutton, ; Grover & Duggan, ; Kitney et al., ; Lane‐Fall, ; Manser, Foster, Flin, & Patey, ; Milby, Bohmer, Gerbershagen, Joppich, & Wappler, ; Randmaa, Martensson, Swenne, & Engstrom, ; Robins & Dai, ; Salzwedel et al., ; Smith, Pope, Goodwin, & Mort, ). The existing literature related to doctor to nurse handover suggests that introduction of standardized assessment, documentation and communication procedures can improve patient safety and quality of care, particularly in clinical areas of high stress (Botti et al., ; Kitney et al., ; Randmaa et al., ) and constant patient turnover as seen in the PACU. However, handover on discharge from the PACU has received limited attention in the literature and to our knowledge no formal evaluation of a structured handover tool has previously been conducted in this setting.…”

Processes and tools to improve teamwork and communication in surgical settings: a narrative review

“…An educational intervention was developed to accompany the implementation of an ISBAR (identification/introduction, situation, background, assessment, request/ recommendation) tool for handovers between the OR and PACU. 45 These comprised 30 min education sessions and the provision of visual cues on unit walls, which led to mixed results for compliance rates. 45 The authors suggest augmenting education and acknowledging the impact of leadership and culture in different contexts.…”

Clinical handover of immediate post-operative patients: A literature review

“…• standardising protocol of clinical handover [33][34][35][36] • mnemonic communication tools in the transfer of content and structure of information such as situation, background, assessment, recommendation (SBAR) [37][38][39][40][41] and SBAR progressions including introduction (I) as ISBAR 42 and Questions (Q) as ISBARQ 43 . An American study used a mnemonic communication tool of illness severity (I), patient summary (P), action list (A), situation awareness (S) and synthesis by receiver (S) as I-PASS36, which was different to another American study that used key content items 44 • an education or training component was included in some but not all studies when standardising content and structure of information transfer 34,37,[39][40][41][42] .…”

“…The use of communication tools improves structure and/or content of information transfer between professionals [36][37][38][39][40]43 . Compliance with using communication tools is improved with training session/s or an education program 37,[39][40][41][42] . Barriers to improvement of clinical handover were identified as lack of knowledge and the impact of time and shift work implications on undertaking training session/s 41 .…”