Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Residents towards Patient Handover during Transitions of Care of Admitted Patients in Tikur Anbessa Specialized Hospital
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Date
2021-12
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Addis Abeba University
Abstract
Abstract
Background: A patient handover refers to the transfer of care from one care provider to the next
and involves three aspects: a transfer of information, responsibility and authority.
Researchers
and hospitals have been implementing different standardized models of handing over patients
and giving trainings to their staff on how to use this models.
Objective: To assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of residents currently doing their
residency at TASH towards the effectiveness of currently implemented handing over system of
admitted patients and use of standardized methods.
Methods: A cross sectional survey was conducted which includes current residents at AAU,
School of Health Science, using a structured questionnaire. Residents with previous attachment
to the places where in-patient service is provided in TASH during the years 2018-2021 were
included. The study was conducted from August 2021 – November 2021 G.C. They were
provided with consent form to participate in the study and were asked to fill a structured
questionnaire online. The data collection instruments was be coded and data was checked and
entered using the software Microsoft Excel 2013. It was cleaned and edited accordingly and was
exported to SPSS version 26.0 statistical package for analysis and checked for missing values
before analysis. The Descriptive analysis was used frequency analysis.
Result: This study showed that residents are knowledgeable (n=245, 90.8%) about the
consequences of poor handover on patient outcome, however, they lack knowledge (n=245,
3.1%) when it comes to standardized methods of handing over patients. Their attitude towards
the current method they are using to handover patients is not good as well (n=245, 72.7%).
Rather they showed good attitude (n=245, 87.6%) towards change to a standardized and proper
way of handover. They also feel positive about possible training of all residents on this
standardized methods. When it comes to practice, this study showed a significant amount of
residents reported as having poor practice (n=245, 42.5%).
Recommendations and Conclusion: This survey has shown that poor handovers of patients
during end of care are common in TASH and at times lead to bad patient outcome. It is therefore
important to train and develop a system where standardized handovers are undertaken. Further
studies can be done to compare if this new methods decrease the rate of patient harm as a result
of poor handover.
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Keywords
Patient handover,handing over system,patients