Clinical handover from emergency medical services to the trauma team: A gap analysis

There has been limited evaluation of handover from emergency medical services (EMS) to the trauma team. We sought to characterize these handover practices to identify areas of improvement and determine if handover standardization might be beneficial for trauma team performance.

Data were prospectively collected over a nine-week period by a trained observer at a Canadian level one trauma centre. A randomized scheduled was used to capture a representative breadth of handovers. Data collected included outcome measures such as duration of handover, structure of the handover, and information shared, process measures such as questions and interruptions from the trauma team, and perceptions of the handover from nurses, trauma team leaders and EMS according to a bidirectional Likert scale.

79 formal verbal handovers were observed. Information was often missing regarding airway (present 22%), breathing (54%), medications (59%), and allergies (54%). Handover structure lacked consistency beyond the order of identification and mechanism of injury. Of all questions asked, 35% were questioning previously given information. The majority of handovers (61%) involved parallel conversations between team members while EMS was speaking. There was a statistically significant disparity between the self-evaluation of EMS handovers and the perceived quality determined by nurses and trauma team leaders.

We have identified the need to standardize handover due to poor information content, a lack of structure and active listening, information repetition, and discordant expectations between team members. These data will guide the development of a co-constructed framework integrating the perspectives of all team members.