International journal for quality in health care : journal of the International Society for Quality in Health Care
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Int J Qual Health Care · Apr 2013
Randomized Controlled TrialThe effect of a checklist on the quality of post-anaesthesia patient handover: a randomized controlled trial.
Patient handover is an important element of continuity, quality and safety in patient care. Handover without standardized protocols is prone to information loss and might be a possible danger to patient safety. Checklists are established methods that help to structure complex processes in other high-risk fields such as aviation. In the past few years, their implementation has attracted research interest in medicine. We hypothesize that a checklist for handover between anaesthesiologist and post-anaesthesia care unit nurse will increase the amount of information transfer during patient handover after anaesthesia. ⋯ This study suggests that the use of a checklist for post-anaesthesia handover might improve the quality of patient handover by increasing the information handed over.