What is SBAR and its examples?

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 healthcare providers makes for proper supervision and a 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 healthcare 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?

SBAR is an acronym for Situation, Background, Assessment, and Recommendation. Among health care professionals or providers, it is the 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 healthcare communication tool, has helped a great deal in preserving and transferring proper information. In and around a hospital setting, the communication tool has contributed to eliminating medical errors and patient safety.

The SBAR tool was developed in 2003 at Kaiser Permanente as a blueprint to help healthcare 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 when a team transfers responsibility to another team, especially when it is no longer their duty or a situation has gone beyond their expertise but still concerns a particular issue or patient. The acronym SBAR as developed has its 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 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 the assessment of the reported situation at hand.

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

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 a healthcare provider can use an SBAR 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, 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 calls 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 many errors and aided in disseminating patients’ health information. The SBAR is a structured communication model tool for healthcare providers to easily detect and share information on a patient’s condition in a hospital setting. Though easy, it requires medical qualification to operate in.

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