Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation (SBAR) Communication Tool for Handoff in Health Care \u2013 A Narrative Review

Shaneela Shahid,Sumesh Thomas

doi:10.1186/s40886-018-0073-1

Abstract

Continuity of patient care is achieved by the clear and concise transfer of patient clinical information from one health care provider to another during handoff. Effective communication is a vital factor in providing safe patient care. Communication failure in a health care setting could lead to serious medical errors. Sharing patient-specific health care information during handoff requires situational awareness. In the hospital setting, most of the communication related to patient care occurs between nurses and physicians. Challenges of communication among health care providers are not limited to differences in training and reporting expectations. The Joint Commission, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Institute for Health Care Improvement (IHI), and World Health Organization (WHO) recognize SBAR (Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation) as an effective communication tool for patients’ handoff. SBAR is a reliable and validated communication tool which has shown a reduction in adverse events in a hospital setting, improvement in communication among health care providers, and promotion of patient safety. This narrative review has highlighted the challenges of communication among health care providers, use of the SBAR tool for effective handoff and transfer of patient care in various health care settings, and comparison of SBAR tool with other communication tools to assess the effective communication and limitations of SBAR communication tool.

Highlights

A handoff between health care providers is the key factor in fostering continuity of care and providing safe patient care [1]
The aim of this paper is to review the challenges of communication among health care providers in clinical setting, to review the use of the standardized Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation (SBAR) communication tool during handoff, and to compare the SBAR tool with other communication tools to assess the communication during patient handoff
Patient safety is the priority in patient care, and communication errors are the most common cause of adverse events during patient care

Summary

Introduction

A handoff between health care providers is the key factor in fostering continuity of care and providing safe patient care [1]. The handoff from one health care provider to another is recognized to be vulnerable to communication failures [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. Communication errors among health care providers are complicated by a hierarchical reporting structure, gender, education, cultural background, stress, fatigue, ethnic differences, and social structure [2, 15,16,17,18]. It is reported that differences in communication styles between nurses and physician are one of the contributing factors to the communication errors [19]. Nurse-physician communication is subject to the effects of differences in training and reporting expectations [20]. A structured communication tool would be beneficial to effectively communicate the patient information, reduce the adverse events, promote

Objectives

Results

Conclusion