You transport a patient to a hospital but after you leave, the hospital staff is left with vague information about the patient’s medical history and medications as well as allergies and assessment details. So the staff has to track you down to find out more information, resulting in a lot of wasted time and resources. The end result is a delay in providing emergency care in a potentially critical situation despite a quick medial flight. This makes it crucial to successfully carry out your patient hand-offs with all the vital information.
Come up with a Standard Procedure to Compile Hand-Off Report
The patient hand-off period should be considered as the point of contact between providers, where they share crucial information about the patient. Although there may be several differences in the setting and circumstances surrounding this contact point, you can still ensure to standardize how the information is shared.
Medical flight crews and ground ambulance crews alike can make use of the SBAR approach developed by TeamSTEPPS. This approach provides you with a framework to effectively communicate with other medical care providers. It involves providing information about:
- Situation – Let them know exactly what’s going on with the patient
- Background – Let them know about the clinical background and/or context
- Assessment – Let them know about the details of the assessment you have carried out and what you think is the problem based on those reports
- Recommendation – Let them know what you recommend should be the next step in medical care for the patient
Importance of Standardizing Report Procedure for Medical Flight Crews
Having a set framework to compile and communicate your hand-off report helps other medical teams in providing quick and efficient care without wasting much time. They can see to it that the patient gets the right kind of care they need when they need it.
