Handoffs are an inevitable part of hospital care; clear communication between providers is required to ensure safe care. This quality improvement project aimed to improve handoffs between the cardiovascular (CV) operating room and CV intensive care unit by developing, implementing, and sustaining a structured handoff bundle. A participatory design was used to ensure that the tool contained only the key elements to support implementation without overburdening users.

Patient safety investigations hinge on the expertise and experiences of the investigator. This commentary discusses the ways in which cognitive biases can impact patient safety investigations and identifies potential mitigation strategies to improve decision-making processes.

Effective handoff communication is a key indicator of safe patient care. These authors outline a new model for handoff communication, integrating three theoretical frameworks addressing relevant inputs (i.e., individual organizational, environmental factors), mediators (e.g., communication, leadership), outcomes (e.g., patient, provider, teamwork, and organizational outcomes), and adaptation loops.

Structured handoffs support appropriate communication between teams or departments when transferring responsibility for care. This meta-analysis aimed to determine if structured, standardized post-operative anesthesia handoffs improved provider, patient, organizational and handoff outcomes. Postoperative outcomes moved in a generally positive direction when compared with non-standardized handoffs. The authors suggest additional research into pre- and intra-operative handoffs is needed.

This pre–post study reports a decline in medication error rates in prehospital emergency services following implementation of a human factors engineering approach. The providers implemented a team-based cross-check process using standardized communication for high-risk medications and found a significant reduction in medication errors.

Communication errors in health care are a persistent challenge to patient safety. This commentary advocates for studying behavioral, cognitive, linguistic, environmental, and technological factors to help understand barriers to effective information exchange in health care. The authors suggest that approaches targeting each set of barriers be developed and embedded into learning activities to generate lasting improvements.

This meta-analysis of handoff protocols found that standardizing handoffs has led to improvements in amount of information passed on, patient outcomes, and provider satisfaction. Although the authors caution that structured handoffs can take longer than usual handoff practices and that errors of omission can persist, they conclude that handoff protocols enhance patient safety across multiple care settings.

This validation study found that the TeamSTEPPS questionnaire—which explores perceptions of teamwork within health care settings—reliably measures how staff perceive leadership, mutual support, situation monitoring, communication, and team structure. According to these findings, this instrument provides a valid way to assess teamwork for safety research and improvement efforts.