Collaborative Communication: Integrating
SBAR to Improve Quality/Patient Safety
Outcomes
Cynthia D. Beckett, Gayle Kipnis
Purpose/Evidence-Based Practice
Question
Collaborative communication and teamwork are essential elements for quality care and patient safety. Adverse patient occurrences are an extremely common outcome of communication failures (Leonard, Graham, & Bonacum,
2004). In 2004, the Joint Commission (formerly the Joint Commission on Accreditation of
Healthcare Organizations) analyzed 2,455 sentinel events from hospitals across the United
States and reported through root cause analysis over 70% of the events were due to communication failures, and approximately 75% of the patients involved died (Leonard et al., 2004).
Although improving communication has been included as a Joint Commission’s National Patient
Safety Goal for hospitals since 2003, in
2006, handoff communications were included as a specific communication subset. NPSG 02.05.01 states ‘‘The organization implements a standardized approach to handoff communications, including an opportunity to ask and respond to questions’’ (Joint Commission, 2006).
Michael Leonard, MD, from Kaiser Permanente-
Denver introduced a collaborative communication tool to support patient safety and outcomes. The structured communication tool is Situation, Background, Assessment, and
Recommendation (SBAR) (Haig, Sutton, &
Whittington, 2006). The SBAR tool provides a framework for organizing information in a clear and concise format; it facilitates consistent collaborative communication between healthcare providers throughout the hospital setting
(Carroll, 2006). Collaborative communication enhances nurse, physician, and patient satisfaction as well as improves patient safety and outcomes by building teamwork and positive work relationships (Boyle & Kochinda, 2004).
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