A multidisciplinary safety briefing for acutely ill and deteriorating patients: A quality improvement project

Safety briefings can help promoting situational awareness, interprofessional communication and improve patient safety.

A clinical survey highlighted that 90% of the participants including the medical team and the critical care outreach team nurses perceived the meeting for escalating acutely ill and deteriorating patients during the out-of-hours period (20.00 to 08.00) to have unconstructive and unwelcoming atmosphere with belittling, hostility and unhelpful criticisms. The participants reported that the communication across teams lacked in structure and clear information given; but staff also self-reported lacking confidence in communicating key issues.

A quality improvement project with Plan-Do-Study-Act was adopted to design and implement a dedicated multidisciplinary safety briefing with a structured format.

The multidisciplinary safety briefing was to 90% of clinicians, and it took a median of 10 min to complete. Delayed referrals to the critical care outreach team were reduced by 46%. Positive changes included increased situational awareness and clearer communication across teams. Barriers identified were variable usage and need for face-to-face presence. Considering all the findings and the time constraint during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, we changed to a telephonic safety briefing directly to the team leaders.

A structured multidisciplinary safety briefing can improve patient safety and support management of deteriorating and acutely ill patients on the wards during the out-of-hours period.