IHI Open School Event - SBAR, Structured Communication, and Psychological Safety in Health Care
Featuring:
- Michael Leonard, MD, Safe & Reliable Healthcare LLC; Adjunct Professor of Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine
- Audrey Lyndon, PhD, RNC, CNS-BC, FAAN, Associate Professor, UCSF School of Nursing
- Jill Morgan, BSN, MBA, NE-BC, Nurse Manager, ICU, UnityPoint Health – St. Luke’s Hospital
- Ansley Stone, OB Quality Coordinator, Carolinas HealthCare System
SBAR is an acronym for Situation-Background-Assessment-Recommendation and is a way for health professionals to effectively and succinctly convey critical information to one another to protect patient safety. Over time, SBAR has proven useful in a myriad of other ways as well. Still, how might we evaluate the utility of SBAR to advance today’s quality improvement and patient safety challenges? Has its singular power to “cut to the chase” eroded over time?
The good news about SBAR is that it’s become part of broader ambitions around safety and reliability in many organizations. But, as we’ll learn from Michael Leonard and Audrey Lyndon, folding SBAR into a larger agenda can mask weaknesses that have crept in with the tool itself. For instance, nurses may have an easier time speaking “up the medical chain of command” using SBAR, but Lyndon says many still struggle with making clear recommendations… the R part. And it’s not always clear if those on the receiving end of structured communication listen effectively. Lyndon suggests there may be a need for a corollary tool to confirm “message received.”
Everyone is welcome!