AORN Patient Hand-Off Toot Kit now available

AORN Journal, Sept, 2007

AORN and the US Department of Defense (DoD) collaboratively have developed a new web-based toot kit to guide patient hand offs in perioperative settings. Communication lapses are identified as a major threat to patient safety, so this tool kit was designed to streamline and standardize communications among caregivers to help them deliver more effective patient care.

The tool kit was created through a memorandum of agreement between AORN's Presidential Commission on Patient Safety and the DoD. The agreement allowed AORN to expand guidance originally developed for TeamSTEPPS[TM]--a joint initiative of the DoD and the federal Department of Health and Human Services' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality--and apply it specifically to hand-off communications within perioperative areas.

The AORN Patient Hand-Off Tool Kit intrudes

* evidence-based recommendations on patient hand offs in the perioperative setting,

* sample checklists and forms,

* PowerPoint[TM] presentations on standardizing communication and information exchanges in perioperative practice, and

* an annotated guide to additional resources.

The tool kit can be downloaded for free from the AORN web site at http://www.aom.org/toolkit /patienthandoff.