Patient Safety: Assessing Nurses' Performance during Shift handover

Abstract

Nursing shift handover is at the heart of an effective health care system and stands alongside the patient clinical documentation. Good clinician handover is vital to protect patient safety. This study aimed to assess nurses' knowledge regarding shift handover, assess nurses' performance of shift handover as a safety measure and audit of the documentation system of shift handover. The study design a descriptive, correlational design. The study was conducted at the Center of Cardiac and Digestive System at Sohag City, in all inpatient departments as well as on the intensive care units. The study sample included (40) staff nurses. Three tools of data collection were used, namely; self-administrated questionnaire sheet which was divided into two parts; part 1 included questions about demographic data of the study subjects, part 2 consisted of multiple choice questions, 2- observation checklist, and 3- audit sheet. The main study results, the majority of study nurses had low total knowledge regarding shift handover (87.5%). About half of studied nurses had moderate performance regarding shift handover (57.5%). Majority of study subjects had an inadequate performance for recording of shift handover. The researcher recommended that hospitals should establish nursing audit committee to review hospital documentations and developing an electronic information system for the nursing documentation and enhancing its' implementation. Key words: Patient safety, Nurses, Performance, and shift handover.