Improving the Quality and safety of care for Patients Transferred by Ambulance to Emergency Departments. Ambulance Patient Handover Protocol Ms Fiona Brady. Nov 2014

Strengths…. Collaborative document Supported by : Integrated education & implementation process

Nov EMP: Ambulance Patient Handover Protocol Standard national protocol. Integrated care between Pre-hospital Emergency Care Practitioners and ED staff Structured, yet flexible handover process Positive contribution of all staff Optimise patient safety and quality of care Allow’s compliance with KPI’s What?

Background. Study in New South Wales Staff Piloted and trained. Now adopted as practise. Post introduction showed marked improvement in Structure of handover. Amount of information handed over. Comprehension of ED Staff. Eye Contact. Handover Duration. Duration Variation.

Background to Project. Developed to support the recommendations from HIQA Tallaght Report “all hospitals in Ireland should monitor the implementation of the national ambulance patient handover time in line with the national emergency medicine programme which requires 95%of patients being handed over from an ambulance crew to the emergency dept. staff in less than 20 minutes and where this is not met, corrective action should be taken”

E-Learning education programme Support’s the implementation Single programme for all health care providers Scenario based – interactive, reflective, links to further reading Self-directed Takes minutes Delivered via education portals

What?

Handover/Governance. Handover time = Clinical information time AND Patient movement time. Clinical Governance now transferred from Pre- hospital to ED personnel.

Ambulance Handover KPI’s.

Patient Safety Objectives Promotes efficient and timely patient handover. Enables transfer of Key patient information. Improves Safety and Quality of patient care. Optimises ED compliance with HIQA/EMP national KPI for Ambulance handover time. Process makes available data for ED’s to monitor their KPI compliance.

Training - What to expect? E-learning programme for all ED staff (45 mins duration). Certificate of training for all ED members. 1 CME point from Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland. One CPD point for Medical Staff. Evaluation report at completion of pilot.

Protocol Roll Out. Initial pilot in one region. South East Emergency Care Network St Luke’s Hospital Kilkenny(August 2014) Wexford General Hospital (Sept 2014) Training on-going Nationally with Go-live dates Set for several sites.

Handover Protocol. Thank You.