New tool aims to standardize handoffs in the ED, boosting safety and preventing communication failures.

To address identified patient safety risks in the handoff process, a group of emergency providers developed Safer Sign Out, a paper-based template that prompts clinicians to jointly review issues of concern on patients who are being passed from one clinician to another at the end of a shift. Already in practice at 12 hospitals in the Mid-Atlantic region, the approach is now being disseminated nationwide with the help of the non-profit Emergency Medicine Patient Safety Foundation. Advocates of the new tool say very few EDs have a clear, agreed-upon process for how to conduct handoffs. Safer Sign Out seeks to prevent communications failures by putting structure into the handoff process. In addition to prompting incoming and outgoing physicians to discuss each patient being handed off, the approach involves having both physicians round at the bedside of these patients so that patients fully understand when their care is being transitioned to a new provider.