Developing an Operating Room–to-Intensive Care Unit Patient Handover Checklist

Abstract

This article reports a study aimed at developing and validating an Operating Room–to-ICU Patient Handover checklist. Deficient or absent clinical handovers, or failures to transfer information, responsibility, and accountability can have unwanted consequences for hospitalized patients. Clinical handovers are practiced every day, in many ways, in all institutional health care settings. Despite increasing demand for structured processes to guide clinical handovers, standardized handover bundles for nurses and physicians are limited in the intensive care unit. As a result of this study an Operating Room–to-ICU Patient Handover checklist was created, which was based on a quantitative and qualitative research design. This checklist is expected to be helpful for proper patient transfers between these critical areas, ensuring patient safety and efficient quality management.