Due to necessary scheduled maintenance, the JMIR Publications website will be unavailable from Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM EST. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause you.
Who will be affected?
Readers: No access to all 28 journals. We recommend accessing our articles via PubMed Central
Authors: No access to the submission form or your user account.
Reviewers: No access to your user account. Please download manuscripts you are reviewing for offline reading before Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 7:00 PM.
Editors: No access to your user account to assign reviewers or make decisions.
Copyeditors: No access to user account. Please download manuscripts you are copyediting before Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 7:00 PM.
A Web-based, Modified Delphi Study to develop an Evidence-Based Nursing Handover Standard for a Multi-Site Public Hospital in Switzerland
Nadine Tacchini-Jacquier;
Hélène Hertzog;
Kilian Ambord;
Peter Urben;
Pierre Turini;
Henk Verloo
ABSTRACT
Background:
Ineffective communication procedures create openings for errors when healthcare professionals fail to transfer complete, consistent information. Deficient or absent clinical handovers, or failures to transfer information, responsibility, and accountability can have severe consequences for hospitalized patients. Clinical handovers are practiced every day, in many ways, in all institutional healthcare settings.
Objective:
The present study aimed to design an evidence-based, nursing handover standard for inpatients for use at shift changes or internal transfers between hospital wards.
Methods:
We carried out a modified, multi-round, web-based, Delphi data-collection survey of an anonymized panel sample of 264 nurse experts working at a multi-site public hospital in Switzerland. Each survey round was built on responses from the previous one. The surveys ended with a focus group discussion including a randomly selected panel of the participants to explain why items for the evidence-based clinical nursing handover standard were selected or not. Items had to achieve a consensus of ≥ 70% for selection and inclusion.
Results:
The study presents the items selected by consensus for an evidence-based nursing handover standard for inpatients for use at shift changes or internal transfers. It also presents the reasons why survey items were included or not.
Conclusions:
This modified Delphi survey method enabled us to develop a consensus- and evidence-based nursing handover standard now being trialed at shift changes and the internal transfers of inpatients in our multi-site public hospital in Switzerland.
Citation
Please cite as:
Tacchini-Jacquier N, Hertzog H, Ambord K, Urben P, Turini P, Verloo H
An Evidence-Based, Nursing Handover Standard for a Multisite Public Hospital in Switzerland: Web-Based, Modified Delphi Study