What is SBAR and its examples?

Table of Contents

Introduction

The term SBAR can eliminate the poor transfer of information or communication among health care providers, information that can lead to poor patient care. The ability to transfer clear and proper information between health care providers makes for proper supervision and better or a necessary approach towards a patient’s health condition.

This, therefore, shows that proper and effective communication is a vital part or factor for the health care providers, when it comes to caring for a patient’s clinical condition, during a handoff. When or if health care providers are not careful about a patient’s health information, it could lead to a medical error that could even cost a patient’s life.

What is SBAR?

The term SBAR is an acronym for Situation, Background, Assessment, and Recommendation. Among health care professionals or providers, it is a most reliable tool used for passing across information among nurses and doctors, concerning a patient’s state of health, during a handoff.

SBAR as a health care communication tool has helped a great deal in the preservation and transfer of proper information. In and around a hospital setting, the communication tool has contributed to the elimination of medical errors and patient safety.

The SBAR tool was developed in 2003 at Kaiser Permanente, as a blueprint to help health care providers consider and solve health problems that require swift response and attention. As a tool, the term SBAR was first initiated and structurally developed and used by the US Submarine, during duty handoff.

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What is SBAR Cont.

A handoff is a period when a team gets to transfer responsibility to another team, especially when it is no longer their duty or a situation has gone beyond their expertise, but still concerning a particular issue or patient. The acronym SBAR as developed has its own meaning embedded in the words.

The letter S which stands for Situation answers the necessary question, what is the situation at hand? The state or condition of a patient’s health. What exactly is wrong with a patient whose case is being reported?

The letter B in SBAR stands for Background and obviously answers the question of the basic information on a situation. The major cause or problem of a situation.

The letter A stands for Assessment. This answers the question of what is the assessment of the reported situation at hand.

Letter R in the acronym which stands for Recommendation seeks to find what a reporting medical personnel recommends to be done about a patient’s health state, what can possibly be done to solve the situation at hand? These questions are asked to ensure swift and immediate response by another team.

The SBAR tool has shown effective communication among health providers. Over time, research has shown that the implementation of this manner of communication has greatly reduced accidents in the hospital setting. Because it is used when a situation has to be immediately attended to, the information to be passed has to be concise and detailed.

Example of SBAR

A perfect example of how an SBAR can be used by a health care provider is when a patient’s condition has gone beyond one medical personnel’s expertise and calls for the attention of another.

It could be from one unit in a hospital building to another that is, calling the attention of one department after detecting that a patient’s condition also affects more than one part of the body. For example; A gynaecologist calling the attention of a physician, reporting the severity of a case that must have affected the lungs or liver of a patient.

The ordering doctor has to state the initial condition of the patient, the present detection and recommendation.
In conclusion, the use of SBAR as a communication tool in the medical field among practitioners makes for easy and better treatments for patients, since the safety of patients is the health care provider’s priority.

The use of SBAR as a communication tool has corrected a lot of errors and has aided in the dissemination of patients’ health information. The SBAR is a structured communication model tool for health care providers to make for easy detection and sharing of information on a patient’s condition in a hospital setting. Though easy, requires medical qualification to operate in.

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