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Save time, lives with a transfer-of-care checklist

Case Management Weekly, August 1, 2007

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It takes just one slip-up or distraction to put a patient at risk during a transfer. For this reason, nurses at Arkansas Children's Hospital (ACH) in Little Rock decided to standardize how they perform patient transfers.

"The more standardization you can put [into place], the more brain it frees up for when something happens," says Penny Ward, RN, director of the pilot project in the medical-surgical department at ACH.

According to Ward, ACH-along with a collaborating group of 10 other pediatric hospitals-decided to implement a transfer-of-care checklist because it

• reduces reliance on memory
• standardizes and prioritizes the order of information
• creates a logical flow of information
• is an efficient utilization of time
• reduces the effect of negative human factors (e.g., stress, fatigue, distraction)
• eliminates redundancy by giving complete and accurate information
• allows patient safety triggers to be built in (i.e., makes it easier to identify which information is missing)

The idea behind the project is to improve the safety of patients during their transfer from one part of an institution to another.

Source: Case Management Monthly, HCPro, Inc.

Other articles of interest:

 Checklist focuses on discharge of elderly

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