How to Improve Hospital Communication for Patient Handoffs February 8, 2019 Tag 1123 This article originally appeared on the TigerConnect website In the fast-paced environment of modern healthcare, good hospital communication is critical to patient outcomes and quality of care. Nowhere is this more evident than when handing over a case to another shift, team, or organization. An effective patient handoff process will help you avoid communication barriers, improve care transitions, create a better patient experience, and ensure excellent continuity of care, throughout the supply chain. There are plenty of ways to enhance the handoff communications process — effective technology, established procedures, staff training, good protocols, and more. This will help you avoid medical errors, improve patient satisfaction, and create greater collaboration throughout your healthcare team. Let's dig into how you can enhance your healthcare organization's clinical patient handoffs. Identify the Various Types of Handoffs Your Organization Makes, and the Requirements for Each One Every type of handoff will be slightly different. Handoffs between nurse shifts on a critical care ward will differ significantly from mental health nursing, or handoffs between surgical and recovery staff. Identify the various types of handoffs your organization makes regularly — between shifts, teams, areas, disciplines, and providers. Speak to your staff to ensure you properly understand the scope of handoffs and who is involved in each one. Establish Best Practices Around Patient Handoffs Before creating handoff protocols, you will want to establish best practice. Look at clinical guidelines, interview staff, and explore successful handoff techniques used elsewhere in your, or other healthcare providers. Establish exactly what types of information that people making and receiving the handoff need, and the best way to provide that information. Create and Communicate Handoff Protocols that Meet Patient, Provider, and Employee Needs Create protocols, processes, and guidelines for every type of handoff your organization makes. Get feedback from your employees and refine your handoff processes to balance efficiency and patient care. Make sure that all of your protocols, processes, and guidelines are clearly communicated — make them easily accessible and build them into your hospital communications technology so they are easy to review and use. Create Handoff Templates and Checklists for Each Kind of Handoff Don't expect staff just to rely on their memory and expertise when they're making handoffs. Create checklists and templates to guide them through the handoff process. Encourage staff to refer to these lists when they're making handoffs so nothing gets missed. Train Your Staff in Making Effective Handoffs Make sure your staff has the right communications skills to carry out their handoffs. Build handoff training into your onboarding process and provide initial and refresher training as needed. Create online resources that your staff can access to get the information they need. Invest in Collaboration and Communication Technology Patient Handoffs become much easier if you have an effective Clinical Communication and Collaboration (CC&C) platform. These platforms will integrate with your other systems, including Electronic Health Records (EHR) and they are a great way to empower hospital communication between teams. This technology allows staff to easily record details about patients, communicate with team members, get diagnostics and results, and record treatment plans. Create Good Habits for Recording Information about Patients and Cases Encourage your staff to record all necessary patient details, histories, diagnostics, results, and treatment in your CC&C platform. This ensures continuity of care, so even after a handoff, the receiving staff can look at patient records to get the most up-to-date information. Ensure that the staff who are handing off their patients review the relevant communication and case histories for accuracy. Give Staff Adequate Time to Complete Patient Handoffs One of the main issues with handoffs is staff not having enough time to complete them. Make sure there is enough overlap between shifts and areas to allow proper handoff communications for every case. Ensure Staff Receiving Patient Handoffs Review Hospital Communications Histories Just as the staff making the handoff need to review case histories for accuracy, you want the staff receiving the handoff to do the same. Encourage them to read through case notes for each patient coming into their care, so they have the latest information. Continually Measure, Analyze, and Improve Your Handoff Processes No matter how good your handoff process is at the moment, it's possible it could be better. Create a mindset of continual improvement and use metrics to identify any possible issues in your handoff process. Analyze what may be causing problems, put improvements in place, and measure again to understand how things have changed. There you have it — a simple guide to making your clinical handoffs as effective as possible. Go through this process with each area and team, and you'll be able to streamline your communications and handoff process without compromising patient care.