Nurse Handover: Evaluating Credibility of Evidence

Nurse Handover: Evaluating Credibility of Evidence
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Nurse Handover: Evaluating Credibility of Evidence
A safety issue that could benefit from an evidence-based approach is nurse handover. Transferring responsibility of care for a patient from one clinician to another is a regular occurrence in daily practice. However, communication breakdowns between the incoming and outgoing nurses are also rife, including omissions of crucial patient data, incomplete medical records, distractions, poor application of transfer forms, illegible documentation, failure to reconcile medications, and inadequate accessibility information (Ghosh et al., 2021). These communication gaps often result in prolonged treatment procedures, patient deterioration, clinical errors, reduced patient satisfaction rates, along with prolonged treatment. Therefore, it is essential to investigate evidence-based approaches that could help eliminate the communication inefficiencies in healthcare practice and improve the handover of clinical information, thereby guaranteeing enhanced continuity of care and patient safety.
The criteria that should be considered when determining the credibility of resources such as websites include the intended purpose of the site; the entity supporting the site; the type of information available, its evidence, and consistency with current knowledge by clinicians; how current the information is or when the site was last updated; the intended audience; the appearance of the site in terms of organization, clarity, and availability of an accessible index with links to other credible sites; as well as any disclaimers to healthcare professionals. On the other hand, the criteria that should be used when determining the credibility of journal articles include whether the journal is indexed in significant bibliography databases, whether the article is peer-reviewed, the author’s credentials, the journal audience, and editorial board, the average number of citations used in the articles, as well as the level of evidence for the article.
Within the context of nurse handover, a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed articles on nurse handover was conducted using four clinical databases (CINAHL Plus, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, and HAPI) covering published material in nursing. After using keywords from the research topic to find the most relevant literature, five articles were obtained. Although all five articles were relevant, they differed in relevance. Therefore, it was critical to use the hierarchy of evidence to identify the most relevant evidence that can be applied to help address the issue of nurse handover. The first study by Lee et al. (2014) was an experimental study investigating communication transfer at nursing handover. It belonged to the Level I category because of its robust and compelling evidence and consistent results. The second study by Smeulers et al. (2014) reviewed RCT studies on different nursing handover styles. It also belonged to the Level I category because it restricted its search to RCT studies. Nevertheless, the two article’s recommendations were a solid indication for a practice change in commu...