The Effectiveness of SBAR Patient Handoff Tool on Patient Safety During Nursing Change-of-Shift Handovers

PICOT QUESTION

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PICOT Question

This assignment will analyze the impact of the patient handoff tool SBAR on patient safety during nursing handovers. The SBAR (situation, background, assessment, recommendation) instrument is a communication tool that has increasingly been endorsed by various healthcare organizations for handoff among clinicians. Various studies have shown that by standardizing the communication process between incoming and outgoing nurses during change-of-shift, the SBAR instrument creates conditions for accurate and efficient information exchange, improving patient outcomes (Müller et al., 2018). The communication tool also allows for the transfer of critical clinical information brief, predictable, and concisely. The PICO question this essay will seek to answer is: In nursing handovers (Population), how effective is the patient handoff tool SBAR (Intervention) compared to using handwritten notes (Comparison) in delivering effective, high-quality healthcare (Outcome) during change-of-shift (Time)?

The literature research strategy began by searching for relevant articles on trusted research databases focusing on healthcare and medicine, including PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, PubMed, and PubMed Central (PMC). In order to refine the literature search process, the following keywords were derived from fundamental concepts in the PICO question: SBAR, patient handover, patient handoff quality, change-of-shift, patient safety, healthcare quality, and communication tool. After using the filters and limits in the databases to optimize the literature search, 17 pertinent articles were identified: Abbaszade et al., 2020; Berghaier et al., 2017; Coolen et al.