Clinical research studyA Prospective Observational Study of Physician Handoff for Intensive-Care-Unit-to-Ward Patient Transfers
Section snippets
Study Setting and Sample
Foothills Medical Centre is the sole tertiary care center in Southern Alberta (population 1.8 million). Its 25-bed medical-surgical ICU serves as a regional referral center for trauma, neurosciences, thoracic surgery, and plastic surgery patients. This study was approved by the University of Calgary Conjoint Faculties Research Ethics Board. We enrolled consecutive patients, when investigators were available, who were 18 years of age or older and discharged alive from the medical-surgical ICU at
Study Population Characteristics
During the 5-month study period, 112 patients were successfully recruited (44.6%). The main reason for eligible patient exclusion from participation in the study (patients in the nonstudy group) was patient transfer on nonstudy days when the investigators were not available. Table 1 summarizes the characteristics of the patients screened for the study. The demographic and clinical characteristics of patients in the study group, including ICU length of stay, proportion of transfers occurring at
Discussion
Relatively few existing studies have prospectively and extensively studied the quality of communication surrounding patient transfers from the ICU to the inpatient wards. Our study findings reveal that physicians and patients/families were, for the most part, generally satisfied with physician communication surrounding ICU-to-ward patient transfers. Our findings demonstrate that ICU staff typically notified and explained to patients and families that they were about to be transferred. We also
Acknowledgment
We thank Alan Delosangeles (Department of Critical Care Medicine) for assistance with data acquisition.
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Eastern association for the surgery of trauma – quality, patient safety, and outcomes committee - transitions of care: healthcare handoffs in trauma
2021, American Journal of SurgeryCitation Excerpt :The transfer of patients from the ICU to the ward is a high-risk transition for the trauma patient primarily because it is from high-intensity to lower-intensity care.25,26 In this setting, the timely transfer of complete and accurate clinical information reduces errors and readmissions to the ICU, thereby reducing healthcare costs.27 Investigations of this critical transition of care have identified that physician to physician communication is often lacking, directly contributing to medical errors.28
Identifying essential elements to include in Intensive Care Unit to hospital ward transfer summaries: A consensus methodology
2019, Journal of Critical CareCitation Excerpt :Accountability is important for an understanding of who is responsible for the patient. There have been instances documented where patients are ‘lost’ to medical care during transitions [17]. In our study panelists rated information elements, such as ICU discharge date and time, name of provider completing the transfer summary and accepting/receiving provider name as essential.
Designing and Validating an Evidence-Based, Shift-to-Shift Handover Bundle for Nurses and Physicians
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Funding: None.
Conflict of Interest: None.
Authorship: All 3 authors contributed equally to conceiving and designing the study, and analyzing and interpreting the data. Dr Li contributed data collection and writing the manuscript. Dr Stelfox provided critical revision and assisted in statistical analysis of data. Dr Ghali provided critical revision and final approval of the manuscript. All 3 authors had access to data.