Date of Award
Summer 2026
Abstract
Abstract
Background: A successful patient handoff report is a foundational element of nursing care, it encompasses the patient's medical history, current treatment plan, patient-centered goals, and notes of consideration. Blazin et. al. (2020) identified unsuccessful patient handoff reports as the root cause of many medical errors. Improving the patient handoff report process provides opportunities for increased registered nurse job satisfaction, reduced medical errors, and increased time efficiency.
Local Problem: Anecdotal discussions with nursing staff on an adult medical-surgical unit revealed frustration with the patient handoff reporting process. Nursing staff cited interruptions, lengthy patient handoff report times, and the need to give or receive report from multiple nurses as challenges of the patient handoff reporting process. These sentiments sparked the interest in a quality improvement initiative to implement a standardized patient handoff report sheet to improve both the timeliness and nurse satisfaction with the patient handoff reporting process.
Methods: A quality improvement (QI) project guided by the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) framework was conducted over a 2-week period with the goals of decreasing the patient handoff reporting times and increasing nurse satisfaction with the patient handoff reporting process. The QI project included a pre- and post-intervention anonymous surveys combined with a project leader generated standardized patient handoff report sheet utilized by study participants throughout the duration of the QI project.
Results: Following the intervention participants reported an estimated 10% decrease in patient handoff reporting times. However, post-intervention surveys revealed participants did not endorse a desire to continue utilizing the standardized patient handoff report sheet. Unique answers to the lack of support for continued usage of this study’s standardized patient handoff report sheet demonstrated the challenges to implementing a standardized tool into a dynamic environment.
Conclusions: The use of a standardized patient handoff report sheet produced a modest decrease in participant-reported patient handoff report time. Despite this, participants of the QI projects reported they wished to return to their own tools for the patient handoff report process. While this study did not achieve all its intended results it did solidify the registered nurses on this unit have a desire for improving the patient handoff reporting process and future efforts should be made to improve this process for timeliness, nurse satisfaction, and patient safety.
Document Type
Master's Thesis
First Advisor
Elizabeth Evans
Second Advisor
Jessica Kama
College or School
CHHS
Department or Program
DEMN
Degree Name
Master of Science
Recommended Citation
McLaughlin, Brian F., "Implementing a Standardized Patient Report Sheet to Improve Timeliness and Efficiency of Patient Handoff Reports: A Quality Improvement Project" (2026). Master's Theses and Capstones. 2126.
https://scholars.unh.edu/thesis/2126