Assessment of postoperative patient handover practice and safety at post anesthesia care unit of Dilla University Referral Hospital, Ethiopia: A cross-sectional study

INTRODUCTION: Good handover creates a common understanding of responsibility and patients’ status. To proceed with effective handover process, effective communication between healthcare providers plays a vital role. But, it is commonly observed that there is ineffective communication between health care providers and it increases the risk of medical errors and negatively affects the quality of care, patient outcome and satisfaction. In addition, the transfer of care after surgery to the postanesthesia care unit (PACU) presents special challenges to providers on both the delivering and receiving teams. METHODOLOGY: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted at post anesthesia care unit of Dilla University Referral Hospital from October 1 to November 30, 2020. To conduct the study, consecutively selected 208 handovers of patients from operation theatre (OT) to PACU were assessed. A checklist was developed based on a combination of criteria adopted from the Australian Medical Association 2006 and British Doctors Committee 2004. It was pilot tested and changes were made before the actual data collection. RESULT: Our study found that the postoperative patient handover practice among professionals was poor (below 50%) in the areas of patients’ full name, age, medical registration number (MRN), ASA class, allergic history, medical history, baseline vital signs, preoperative diagnosis and surgical procedure performed. Our study also found poor postoperative hand overing regarding the intraoperative blood loss 9.6%, intraoperative clinical incidents 5.3%, recovery condition 7.2%, postoperative analgesia plan 18.8%, and post operative antibiotic plan 8.2%. Whereas, type of anesthesia 81.3%, intraoperative vital signs 80.8%, and intraoperative analgesia used 79.8%, intraoperative fluid management 80.8% were among the indicators with >50% completion rate. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION: Our study found a poor practice of patient handover regarding sociodemographic and preoperative profile, anesthesia, surgery and other necessary information. We believe standardizing this process and providing training will improve the quality of postoperative handovers and the safety of patients during this critical period.