Nurses’ experience of interprofessional communication during handover of critical ill patients in Norwegian out of hours emergency clinics – a qualitative study.

Abstract

Summary

Background: Patient handover is closely linked to patient safety (Makkink, Stein & Bruijns,2022) As the first interaction the patient has with the health care system, out-of-hours emergency clinics are critically significant. The patient handover process of critical ill patients is an essential part of the care in out-of-hours emergency clinics. It can be a factor to improve the quality of medical care. Inadequate handovers between nurse and ambulance personnel can threaten patient safety by increasing the risk of adverse events.

Aim: The purpose of this study was to create an insight in nurse’s experience of how communication between nurses and ambulance personnel might affect patient safety during handover of critically ill patients in the Norwegian out-of-hours emergency clinics.

Method: This study was conducted as a qualitative study, using individual semi-structured interviews with nurses working in Norwegian out-of-hours emergency clinics. This method contributes to obtain diversity, nuances and subjective experiences of the investigated theme (Malterud, 2018). Data was examined with qualitative content analysis inspired by Graneheim & Lundman (2004).

Results: Content analysis of semi-structured interviews revealed two main categories: communication challenges in handover situations and influencing factors for patient safety. Nurses reported a need for improvement of the today’s handover situations and points out the lack of joint training as a potential threat to patient safety.

Conclusion: The handover of critical ill patients is a process associated with a high risk of complications. Results in this study demonstrates that it might be possible beneficial to improve the interdisciplinary practice between nurses and ambulance personnel to ensure patient safety during handovers in a Norwegian out-of-hours emergency clinic setting.