Improving Hand-Off Communication.
The process of transferring primary responsibility for patient care is commonly referred to as a handoff. Handoffs are inherently dangerous times for patient safety due to discontinuity of providers and care delivery. This book offers health care organizations step-by-step instructions, sample forms, and insights to help standardize the patient transfer process. The book provides tips for implementing the SBAR (Situation-Background-Assessment-Recommendation) method, which has become widely accepted as a signout tool. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education requires residency programs to address safe handoffs during training. An AHRQ WebMM commentary discussed the dangers of suboptimal handoffs.