Communicate with me: Information Exchanges between Nurses

Patient safety and continuity of quality care are dependent on effective communication. Clinical nurse specialists at the Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg were finding that when they sought out essential patient information from front-line nurses, they sometimes encountered gaps in knowledge about the patient. Having to acquire this information elsewhere was causing unnecessary delays in care. The authors, members of an advanced practice nurses group at the Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg, undertook a quality improvement project to gain an understanding of the problems in information exchanges between nurses. Through interviews with front-line nurses on four units, they found that many factors contributed to the lack of knowledge nurses had about patients, such as inconsistent documentation, poorly defined plans of care and variable communication patterns. This project highlighted the need to develop a standardized handoff template to aid in information exchanges.