Clinical trial NCT03465839: Bedside Nursing Handovers in the Surgical Context
Official title: The Efficacy of Bedside Nursing Handovers in Improving Information Exchange Quality in Surgical Patients: a Randomised Controlled Trial
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: General Surgery
Lead sponsor: University of Eastern Piedmont
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: Valduce Hospital
First posted: 2018-03-14
Enrollment: 318
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Maximum age (years): 99
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: no
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Brief summary: Nursing handovers are performed 2-3 times a day for each patient, with an approximate average of 2 million nursing deliveries per year in a hospital of medium size. Nursing handovers are considered essential for the continuity and safety of care. If the relevant clinical information is not shared in a precise and timely manner, it may worsen the patients' outcomes with an increase in adverse events, delays or inappropriate treatment until the omission of procedures.

The modality of nursing delivery presents, therefore, a gap of vulnerability where vital information could not be considered and systematically shared.

Patients should be involved in their care to promote a patient-centred approach. The involvement of patients in handovers is effective compared to other delivery methods.

To date, however, the best mode to deliver handovers was still unclear due to a systematic lack of studies to identify the best practice of nursing handovers. The studies in the literature lack of sound methodologies due to not randomized designs.

Thus an intervention to improve quality of handovers and to implement bedside handovers in surgical wards will be performed.

The following hypotheses were made:

* The introduction of nursing bedside handovers will improve the quality of the information exchanged.
* The educational intervention training intervention will positively modify the nursing handovers.
* There is a relationship between the qualitative level of nursing handovers and working status (expert vs novice) of the nurses.
* There is a relationship between the qualitative level of nursing handovers and the patients' characteristics.


Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Surgical patients
* All nurses working with surgical patients who attended the educational intervention

Exclusion Criteria:

* Nurses who did not participate in the educational intervention
* Nursed who did not operate stably in the surgical wards included in the study
* New hired nurses

Primary outcomes:
measure: Change in handover quality
timeFrame: Baseline, at 1 month after intervention, at 6 months after intervention
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Handover length
timeFrame: Baseline, at 1 month after intervention
measure: Missed care / procedures / diagnostic tests
timeFrame: Baseline, at 1 month after intervention, at 6 months after intervention
measure: Patients satisfaction
timeFrame: Baseline, at 1 month after intervention, at 6 months after intervention
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Como
country: Italy
facility: Valuduce Hospital
Study officials:
affiliation: University of Eastern Piedmont
name: Marco Clari, RN, PhD s
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References:
citation: Smeulers M, Lucas C, Vermeulen H. Effectiveness of different nursing handover styles for ensuring continuity of information in hospitalised patients. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2014 Jun 24;2014(6):CD009979. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD009979.pub2.
citation: Abraham J, Kannampallil T, Patel VL. A systematic review of the literature on the evaluation of handoff tools: implications for research and practice. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2014 Jan-Feb;21(1):154-62. doi: 10.1136/amiajnl-2012-001351. Epub 2013 May 23.
citation: Clemow R. Care plans as the main focus of nursing handover: information exchange model. J Clin Nurs. 2006 Nov;15(11):1463-5. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2702.2006.01524.x. No abstract available.
citation: Chaboyer W, McMurray A, Johnson J, Hardy L, Wallis M, Sylvia Chu FY. Bedside handover: quality improvement strategy to "transform care at the bedside". J Nurs Care Qual. 2009 Apr-Jun;24(2):136-42. doi: 10.1097/01.NCQ.0000347450.90676.d9.