• Cornelie Salzwedel, Hans-Jürgen Bartz, Ina Kühnelt, Daniel Appel, Oliver Haupt, Stefan Maisch, and Gunter Nils Schmidt.
• Clinic and Policlinic of Anaesthesiology, University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf, Martinistrasse 52, 20246 Hamburg, Germany. c.salzwedel@uke.uni-hamburg.de
• Int J Qual Health Care. 2013 Apr 1;25(2):176-81.

ObjectivePatient handover is an important element of continuity, quality and safety in patient care. Handover without standardized protocols is prone to information loss and might be a possible danger to patient safety. Checklists are established methods that help to structure complex processes in other high-risk fields such as aviation. In the past few years, their implementation has attracted research interest in medicine. We hypothesize that a checklist for handover between anaesthesiologist and post-anaesthesia care unit nurse will increase the amount of information transfer during patient handover after anaesthesia.Design And SettingA total of 120 post-anaesthesia patient handovers were recorded on video and analyzed. Forty handovers before the implementation of the checklist and 80 after the implementation of the checklist, randomized into two groups: with and without the use of the checklist.Main Outcome MeasuresAn overall number of items handed over, handover of specific items and duration of the handover were analyzed.ResultsWith the use of the written checklist, the overall items handed over increased significantly from a median of 32.4-48.7%. The duration of handover increased from a median of 86-121 s. Instructions about items that should be included in handovers, but without the use of a written checklist, was not associated with an increase in the number of items handed over or duration of the interview.ConclusionsThis study suggests that the use of a checklist for post-anaesthesia handover might improve the quality of patient handover by increasing the information handed over.

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