How to implement the hand-off communication National Patient Safety Goal—from the expert who helped to design it!
There’s no question about it: Hand-offs are a hot-button patient safety issue facing Joint Commission-accredited healthcare organizations. In a perfect world, medical information moves with the patient, so caregivers can stay informed at every turn. Although the goal is for a seamless transition, the hand-off from one caregiver to another, one unit to another, one shift to another, patient care can often be disrupted due to:
- interruptions
- lack of clarity with the process
- non-standardized technique
- incomplete information.
Train your staff to communicate clearly and completely during every patient hand-off
In Hand-Off Communication: Practical Strategies and Tools for JCAHO Compliance, author Kurt Patton—former Executive Director of Accreditation Services for The Joint Commission—addresses common communication challenges you face with the kind of guidance only a former Joint Commission accreditation specialist can provide.
Filled with practical strategies, case studies and tools, this useful guide and companion CD-ROM provide everything you need to understand how to comply with The Joint Commission’s National Patient Safety Goal #2E, including:
- Sample policies and forms that can be adapted to your facility.
- Peer case studies on successful hand-off process implementation.
- Answers to many of your frequently-asked questions.
- Suggestions for training staff and answering surveyor questions.
- Using the tracer methodology to monitor effectiveness.
- Direct insight into the National Patient Safety Goal expectations and how to ensure compliance.
Meet The Joint Commission’s hand-off communication goal
The Joint Commission’s National Patient Safety Goal reads simply: Implement a standardized approach to “hand off” communications, including an opportunity to ask and respond to questions. That leaves you to figure out what constitutes a hand-off, how to design a standardized approach, and how to implement it.
Hand-Off Communication: Practical Strategies and Tools for JCAHO Compliance explains The Joint Commission’s requirements and offers clear advice for compliance. The book explores many of the problems and challenges you face during the hand-off process, developing a policy and implementing it, and identifies the resources you’ll need to meet the surveyor scrutiny.
Design a hand-off communication process that works for your facility.
Hand-Off Communication highlights specific staff roles and techniques for staff training; while identifying the barriers that must be overcome in order to apply the standard effectively. You’ll get the tools you need to create your facility’s hand-off process. Learn to develop a policy, how to implement it, and how to monitor its effectiveness.
Strategies, strategies, strategies!
Through FAQs, case studies, and helpful tools, Hand-Off Communication: Practical Strategies and Tools for JCAHO Compliance provides a comprehensive resource for hand-off methods and strategies. From cutting-edge methodologies like SBAR (situation-background-analysis-response) to time-saving tips using techniques already employed, this timely how-to book offers a variety of compliance guidance for any size organization on this critical National Patient Safety Goal.
Be survey ready.
If your organization has questions about the hand-off communication process or doesn’t know where to start in developing a standardized approach, Hand-Off Communication: Practical Strategies and Tools for JCAHO Compliance has the answers. This plain-English book offers expert explanations and compliance guidance directly from a former Joint Commission executive who helped design the Goal.
Who should read this book?
- Joint Commission survey coordinators
- QI/PI director and professionals
- Risk managers
- Nurse managers
- Chief nursing officers
- Patient safety officers
- Physicians/medical staff
- Patient care directors
Look at the depth and breadth of coverage you’ll receive in Hand-Off Communication: Practical Strategies and Tools for JCAHO Compliance:
Table of Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1: The hand-off communication goal
Chapter 2: Problems and challenges in various settings
Chapter 3: Resources
Chapter 4: How hand-off communication is surveyed
Chapter 5: Design and implementation
Chapter 6: Two leadership standards that can foil efforts, one that can help
Chapter 7: Policy development
Chapter 8: Staff training
Chapter 9: Monitoring effectiveness
Chapter 10: Barriers to overcome
Appendix A: Related articles
Appendix B: Frequently asked questions
Appendix C: Case studies and field tools
About the Author
Kurt Patton is the principal of Patton Healthcare Consulting, LLC. Patton served as Executive Director of Accreditation Services at The Joint Commission for more than seven years until his retirement in December 2005. In this role, he worked with all types of accredited organizations seeking to be re-surveyed, and new organizations seeking to become accredited
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