Breakdowns in communication can cost lives and dollars. Here's what it takes to create smooth patient handoffs. Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the newsletter Briefings on ...

The Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, as part of its graduate medical education policies and procedures, provides a downloadable patient handoff policy and sample form. The three-page policy ...

Miscommunication can occur on the receiving end as well. Humans, after all, are fallible. A physician who is interrupted during handoff may not remember what he is told. An overwhelmed physician may ...

Here are 12 tools that aim to improve patient handoff at healthcare facilities. Digital Nurse Assistant. Developed by PARC, a Xerox company, Digital Nurse Assistant is an electronic medical record ...

The Emergency Medicine Patient Safety Foundation offers a free Safer Sign Out form to improve the safety of patient handoffs at the end of a shift. The Safer Sign Out protocol, originally developed by ...

A 3-step protocol, "time-out for sign-out," standardizes OR to ICU handoffs, improving communication and patient safety. Junior clinicians benefit significantly from structured handoff processes, ...

Implementation of a multifaceted program to improve patient handoffs (change in staff caring for a patient) among physicians-in-training residents at a children's hospital was associated with a ...

Safety is a public health issue that affects not only the well-being of our patients, but also the integrity of our entire industry. Over the years, we’ve made incredible strides in improving safety ...

Mortality rates are higher among hospitalized patients who are transitioned when a physician in training is rotated to another specialty. The rotation-associated increase in mortality rate worsened ...