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Improving the Written Medical Handover
The handover of large numbers of medical patients, during on call periods when staffing levels are reduced, is a challenge for all acute medical services. At the Royal Cornwall Hospital, a large district general hospital, we identified that foundation doctors were reviewing medical inpatients during...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BMJ Publishing Group
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5759724/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29333500 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjoq-2017-000278 |
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author | Martin, Rhys Huddart, Melanie Garbett, Cara Storr, Wendell Watts, Olivia Gupta, Sanjeev |
author_facet | Martin, Rhys Huddart, Melanie Garbett, Cara Storr, Wendell Watts, Olivia Gupta, Sanjeev |
author_sort | Martin, Rhys |
collection | PubMed |
description | The handover of large numbers of medical patients, during on call periods when staffing levels are reduced, is a challenge for all acute medical services. At the Royal Cornwall Hospital, a large district general hospital, we identified that foundation doctors were reviewing medical inpatients during weekend on call periods with limited written handover information. We chose to address this problem by developing an intervention, a weekend handover sticker, and piloting it. We used the review of documentation to measure improvement and feedback from users to assess the processes involved. Use of the weekend handover form improved the written communication between weekday and weekend teams. The number of weekend plans documented in the notes increased from 15% to 84% and the provision of a patient summary within the last 7 days increased from 26% to 94%. The feedback from users confirmed it was a useful intervention and 100% (15/15) of doctors and nurses responded positively to the question “Do you think the weekend sticker should be introduced and used at the weekend for all medical patients?” The feedback also identified concerns regarding additional workload for weekday ward staff and this has led to ongoing work to try and ensure that the weekend handover form continues to be used effectively to maintain an improved level of written handover information for on call staff. While we have not included a direct measure of patient care, we hope that by improving the quality of written handover information we are acting to ensure patient information is shared effectively, with likely positive impact on patient care. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5759724 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | BMJ Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-57597242018-01-12 Improving the Written Medical Handover Martin, Rhys Huddart, Melanie Garbett, Cara Storr, Wendell Watts, Olivia Gupta, Sanjeev BMJ Open Qual BMJ Quality Education Report The handover of large numbers of medical patients, during on call periods when staffing levels are reduced, is a challenge for all acute medical services. At the Royal Cornwall Hospital, a large district general hospital, we identified that foundation doctors were reviewing medical inpatients during weekend on call periods with limited written handover information. We chose to address this problem by developing an intervention, a weekend handover sticker, and piloting it. We used the review of documentation to measure improvement and feedback from users to assess the processes involved. Use of the weekend handover form improved the written communication between weekday and weekend teams. The number of weekend plans documented in the notes increased from 15% to 84% and the provision of a patient summary within the last 7 days increased from 26% to 94%. The feedback from users confirmed it was a useful intervention and 100% (15/15) of doctors and nurses responded positively to the question “Do you think the weekend sticker should be introduced and used at the weekend for all medical patients?” The feedback also identified concerns regarding additional workload for weekday ward staff and this has led to ongoing work to try and ensure that the weekend handover form continues to be used effectively to maintain an improved level of written handover information for on call staff. While we have not included a direct measure of patient care, we hope that by improving the quality of written handover information we are acting to ensure patient information is shared effectively, with likely positive impact on patient care. BMJ Publishing Group 2018-01-06 /pmc/articles/PMC5759724/ /pubmed/29333500 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjoq-2017-000278 Text en © Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/ This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ |
spellingShingle | BMJ Quality Education Report Martin, Rhys Huddart, Melanie Garbett, Cara Storr, Wendell Watts, Olivia Gupta, Sanjeev Improving the Written Medical Handover |
title | Improving the Written Medical Handover |
title_full | Improving the Written Medical Handover |
title_fullStr | Improving the Written Medical Handover |
title_full_unstemmed | Improving the Written Medical Handover |
title_short | Improving the Written Medical Handover |
title_sort | improving the written medical handover |
topic | BMJ Quality Education Report |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5759724/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29333500 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjoq-2017-000278 |
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