Development of Nurse's Handover Standards between Hospital Units using SBAR

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop the adapted standard items of situation, background, assessment, recommendations (SBAR) processing for handover between nursing units in Korean hospitals and evaluate the validity and relevance of the standard items.Methods: A delphi method with 33 experts was used to evaluate content validity of the standard items. Then, 1,175 nurses working in general hospitals of more than 500 beds were recruited to evaluate the validity and relevance of the standard items for clinical implication. Results: Content validity was higher than 0.8. The highest scores for relevance among items in handover standards were state of consciousness in the assessment domain for a ward to a ward transfer (3.82±0.40), for a ward to an ICU (3.85±0.38), an ICU to a ward (3.81±0.39) and an ER to a ward (3.85±0.37). Congenital malformation was the highest relevance score for handover from a delivery room to a neonatal unit (3.91±0.30). Conclusion: This study evaluated validity and relevance of the essential contents for handover standards between units to improve communication quality among nurses. The findings of this study should also be applied in clinical nursing areas and the quality of information and effectiveness of usage of the standard should be evaluated.