Development of an orthopedic surgery trauma patient handover checklist.
BACKGROUND
In surgery, preoperative handover of surgical trauma patients is a process that must be made as safe as possible. We sought to determine vital clinical information to be transferred between patient care teams and to develop a standardized handover checklist.


METHODS
We conducted standardized small-group interviews about trauma patient handover. Based on this information, we created a questionnaire to gather perspectives from all Canadian Orthopaedic Association (COA) members about which topics they felt would be most important on a handover checklist. We analyzed the responses to develop a standardized handover checklist.


RESULTS
Of the 1106 COA members, 247 responded to the questionnaire. The top 7 topics felt to be most important for achieving patient safety in the handover were comorbidities, diagnosis, readiness for the operating room, stability, associated injuries, history/mechanism of injury and outstanding issues. The expert recommendations were to have handover completed the same way every day, all appropriate radiographs available, adequate time, all appropriate laboratory work and more time to spend with patients with more severe illness.


CONCLUSIONS
Our main recommendations for safe handover are to use standardized checklists specific to the patient and site needs. We provide an example of a standardized checklist that should be used for preoperative handovers. To our knowledge, this is the first checklist for handover developed by a group of experts in orthopedic surgery, which is both manageable in length and simple to use.
The Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alta.
Justin
J
LeBlanc
The Medical Education and Research Unit and Department of Community Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alta.
Tyrone
T
Donnon
The Department of Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alta.
Carol
C
Hutchison
The Department of Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alta.
Paul
P
Duffy
D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D002170:Canada; D057189:Checklist / Q000592:standards*; D002983:Clinical Competence; D005260:Female; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009985:Orthopedics / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000592:standards*; D010348:Patient Care Team; D062209:Patient Handoff / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000592:standards*; D061214:Patient Safety; D012955:Societies, Medical; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014194:Traumatology / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000592:standards*