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| Image Credit: Flickr |
Andrew W. Phillips, MD MEd, Stanford/Kaiser Emergency Medicine Residency Program
Sarah Williams, MD, Stanford University, Division of Emergency Medicine
Originally Published: Common Sense, January/February 2015
The Importance of Sign-outs
Emergency physicians routinely perform sign-outs, both at shift change and during consultations and admissions. Sign-out, also known as a hand-off or turnover, is a time to summarize information about current patients and transition their care from one provider to the next. This sign-out can be between emergency physicians (EPs) or between EPs and other health care providers. However, despite being so common in everyday practice, sign-outs continue to be cited as a large source of medical error in the emergency department (ED).[1] It is critical for patient safety that this process is optimized.
The ideal sign-out happens in a quiet area with no distractions, with sufficient time to discuss pertinent aspects of patient care.[2] This may be possible on a medicine floor, although even here there are challenges. However, this is particularly difficult to achieve in the ED.[3,4] Nonetheless, recent research shows that a standardized sign-out process can reduce medical errors.[3]
