Can I handover? A systematic literature review on handover in emergency department interactions

Effective communication during handover in Emergency Department (ED) is extremely important. Despite the abundance of studies on handover interactions in EDs, the task of conducting a systematic review on this specific research topic has proven to be challenging. This is due to the lack of inclusion of review procedures, making it difficult for scholars to replicate or interpret the findings. This study aims to conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) concerning interactions during handover in ED. The review processes consisted of five essential methodological steps, guided by a review protocol and involved formulating research questions, implementing systematic searching strategies to identify relevant studies from established databases such as Scopus, Web of Science, Science Direct, Emerald, Taylor Francis, Springer Link, and Sage Journals, quality appraisal, data extraction, and analysis. 2985 articles were identified, 249 articles left after screening, and 17 articles were reviewed. The key of the study is to answer the question; ‘How do health personnel communicate during handoffs in the EDs? Themes were also discovered based on the thematic analysis: (1) handoff tool, (most widely used are: are SBAR (Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation), iSoBAR (Identify, Situation, Observation, Background, Agreed plan, Read back), I-PASS (Illness severity, Patient summary, Action list, Situation awareness and contingency planning, Synthesis by receiver), and IDEAS (Identification, Diagnosis, Status, Actions, warning Signs and Symptoms); (2) Closed loop communication (CLC); (3) Self embodied knowledge; (4) verbal or written and two influencing themes: (5) environment and (6) people. These six themes were furthermore divided into nine sub-themes.