Definition of an Entrustable Professional Activity for interprofessional patient handover for nurses - an interview study

Abstract

Abstract Background Interprofessional patient handover between physicians and nurses is considered one of the most important professional activities for ensuring patient safety. Errors in interprofessional patient handover are a major cause of preventable patient harm. For this reason, nurses and physicians are expected to be competent in patient handover at the end of their training or studies. However, the topic of interprofessional patient handover is hardly addressed in German medical and nursing curricula. The concept of Entrustable Professional Activities (EPA), which guarantees a high degree of theory-practice transfer, seems to be a promising teaching-learning approach in this context. An EPA for interprofessional patient handover already exists for the medical profession. However, this EPA is not transferable to the nursing profession and therefore needs to be defined for mono- or interprofessional nursing education. Methods Qualitative guided interviews were used to identify the structural and procedural conditions of an interprofessional patient handover situation for nurses. The interviews were analysed using qualitative content analysis. The results of the analysis were integrated into an EPA structure and validated by consensus. Results A total of 20 guided interviews were conducted with nurses (N = 9) and physicians (N = 11). Based on the results of the analyses and a consensus round, the EPA „Interprofessional patient handover and/or reception” for nurses could be defined. Conclusions Our findings provide a detailed picture of interprofessional patient handover in nursing. Furthermore, the EPA we presented for nurses, in conjunction with the EPA for interprofessional patient handover for physicians from the National Competence-Based Catalogue of Learning Objectives 2.0, enables the comprehensive recording and review of interprofessional patient handover in a clinical context.