BEDSIDE SHIFT REPORT IMPROVES PATIENT SAFETY AND NURSE ACCOUNTABILITY

Why bedside shift report? The short answer:Patient safety.The truth is, thousands of patients are cared for every day in US emergency departments, resulting in thousands of shift changes and thousands of opportunities for error. According to the Institute of Medicine’s report To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System, between 44,000 and 98,000 people die in US hospitals each year because of preventable health care errors.1 Even greater are the numbers of preventable errors that do not result in death but lead to acute or chronic illness, injury, and/or disability. Financial costs from errors are also substantial and include lost income, reduced pro-ductivity, increased health care costs, and inflated health insurance premiums.1 The emergency department is also a high-risk environ-ment in which additional safety factors must be consid