Executive Summary

The hospice company I work for needs improvement in after hour handoff communication. As a home team nurse, I work Monday thru Friday 8am-5pm. After 5 pm and weekends all communications are sent to the after hour service. The current system in place generates a report for every patient who calls in after hours. That report is sent to the manager and in turn the manager relays the message to the interdisciplinary team. However, with every system there is room for improvement. Sometimes the manager may forget to send the report to the nurse or if the manger is off, the report gets lost and the nurse is unaware of what occurred the night before to the patient. When I arrive to the patient, the family is asking if I’m aware of the situation or problem that occurred and I have no clue. The lack of communication makes it look like the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. My quality improvement initiative would refine the system to that once a family calls and any changes are made, the interdisciplinary team would receive a message in the company phone so that there would be no lapse patient care.

Reference

https://www.ahrq.gov/data/monahrq/myqi/nursing.html#ulcers