Communication, particularly related to handoffs, has been widely implicated in patient safety issues (eg, errors). Most research has focused on the quality of communication between individuals (eg, erroneous, missing, or irrelevant information). Little attention has been paid to the quality of the overall communication network on the patient care unit and how it may relate to patient quality and safety outcomes, in part because of lack of tools to do so. We used *ORA, a dynamic network analysis tool, to examine the characteristics of communication networks on seven medical surgical units in three acute-care hospitals in the Southwestern United States and how those characteristics relate to a variety of patient safety and quality outcomes. Each of the hospitals had achieved Magnet recognition from the American Nurses' Credentialing Center for the quality of care, excellence of nursing, and professional practice innovation. Therefore, it is not surprising that there were a number of commonalities in the safety and quality goals on which staff were focused, as well as various outcomereporting mechanisms. We report the results of our analysis of communication patterns involved in the handoff that occurs between the day and night shift. Communication breakdowns during the transfer of care from one provider to another have been implicated as a 36
Similarly, Effken REF explored relationships between transportations of patients among different care units and patient safety and quality outcomes by using communication networks.
Using *ORA, a network analysis tool, to assess the relationship of handoffs to quality and safety outcomes.
Computers, informatics, nursing : CIN
Computers, informatics, nursing : CIN
Medicine