A STANDARDIZED SHIFT HANDOVER PROTOCOL: IMPROVING NURSES’ SAFE PRACTICE IN THE AREA OF MEDICATION AND INTRAVENOUS LINE IN INTENSIVE CARE UNITS

Poor communication among health care providers includes risk factors that
should always take into account in monitoring of medication errors and intravenous lines. Information
exchange happens repeatedly among healthcare providers. An instance of such communication and
exchange of information that plays a pivotal role in improving patient safety is during the nursing shift
handovers. They should be done in a standard procedure, and they should be documented to improve
the performance in the areas of safety and preventing medication errors and intravenous lines. This
study was accomplished to investigate the effect of a standardized shift handover protocol on the safe
performance of nurses in the areas of care of intravenous lines and medications.
Materials & Methods: This was a quasi-experimental, one group pretest/posttest study on 56 nurses
working in intensive care unit in Qhaem Hospital who were conveniently selected. The safety
performance level of nursing care were evaluated before and after implementation of written
guideline using self-structured checklist of performance evaluation of nursing care. Validity and
reliability of this instrument was determined by Content Validity Index and Inter Rater
Reliability(r=0.95).
Results: Study findings revealed that nurses’ mean score on the Safe Practice Evaluation Checklist
increased significantly (p<0.001). Wilcoxon test showed that there is a significant difference in the
two areas related to the nursing care of medication and intravenous lines.
Conclusion: Development of a rule-based approach, comprehensive and practical standard protocol
to transmit crucial and relevant information related to the patient care will improve safe performances
of nurses in the area of medication and intravenous lines nursing care