Factors Influencing Quality of Emergency Department Nurse Shift Handover

Nurse-to-nurse shift handover communication is an essential exchange of information that occurs at shift change with the purpose of ensuring that incoming nurses have necessary information to take responsibility for their patients and to provide high quality, safe care. Poor quality shift handover has been associated with adverse outcomes such as incorrect treatment, delays in diagnosis, increased length of stay, and both nurse and patient dissatisfaction. Despite an increase in the amount of handover related literature, little is known about factors that influence quality of nurse-to-nurse shift handover. The Emergency Department (ED) environment presents unique challenges for high quality handover communication as a result of unpredictability, increased volumes and rapid patient turnover. The purpose of this study was to test and refine a conceptual model of 18 factors hypothesized to influence quality of nurse-to-nurse shift handover communication in the ED. This study was conducted using a cross-sectional survey design. A total of 650 ED nurses across the Province of Ontario were invited to participate in this study. The survey included questions about demographic information as well as items and instruments to measure concepts such as staffing, triage, relationships, safety climate, interruptions, job stress, fatigue and handover format. The hypothesized conceptual model was tested using backwards stepwise multiple regression with data from a final sample of 227 participants. Following multiple regression analysis, four statistically significant predictors were retained in the final model. Together, triage flow, intrusions, safety climate and relationships explained 34% of the variance in handover quality (p

Department dc:contributor.department

Nursing Science

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Thomson, Heather

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Tourangeau, Ann

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1807/71326

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/71326