Advancing the Evidence Base for a Standardized Provider Handover Structure: Using Staff Nurse Descriptions of Information Needed to Deliver Competent Care

Using existing gold standard structures to manage "handover" was a conceptual communication challenge for nurses involved in critically important shift-to-shift transitions in this study, which was conducted at a Central Coast California District Hospital. An extensive body of literature identifies poor communication as jeopardizing patient safety, quality, and continuity of care. Researchers who used the prevailing structures, Situation-Background-Assessment-Recommendation (SBAR), used by the World Health Organization (WHO), and the Communication During Patient Handover (CDPH), sanctioned by The Joint Commission (TJC), had difficulty categorizing content described by nurses as necessary to the delivery of competent care. This article describes a study that resulted in an alternative structure for handover, D-BANQ, which aligns with prevailing WHO-SBAR and TJC-CDPH handover structures and provides an easy-to-follow chronological format for the content that nurses identified as necessary to communicate during this important nursing activity.