The Effects of Situation-Background-Assessment- Recommendation Communication (SBARC) on Safety Attitude of Nurses, Length of Stay and Patient Satisfaction in a Home Care Facility in Qatar

Abstract

Introduction. Ineffective handover reports can lead to adverse events, reduce patient safety, and affects the outcome of care. There is information that are missed, omitted, or forgotten by the nurses during transition of patient care due to unavailability of structured communication tool for hand over and the lack of confidence among the nurses to communicate. It was clear that a system of handover was required enabling the healthcare workers to develop the skill of a wider situational awareness of the overall state of the patients. With the presence of evidenced-based, effective and welltested tool like SBARC, it remained unacceptable for the healthcare practitioner to practice on sub-standard handover practice and to the patient as well to continue to be subjected to unsafe health system from which they submit themselves for medical consultations.

Objectives of the study. The purpose of this study is to determine the effects of SBARC on the attitudes of nurses, length of stay and patient satisfaction in the homecare facility in Doha, Qatar. This study will determine the attitudes of nurses in terms of confidence, knowledge and safety attitudes and will compare the attitudes of nurses pre and post of SBARC. This will also measure the length of stay and determine the patient satisfaction and compare them pre- and-post SBARC. This will further investigate the correlation between the safety attitudes, length of stay and patient satisfaction.

Methodology. This is a quasi-experimental, non-randomized, single subject (one group) pre-test/posttest design using quantitative approach of inquiry. The study hypothesized that the length of stay of patient during admissions are more likely reduced, more referrals, and improved nurse-to-nurse interaction after the used of SBARC .The population of this study was the 90 registered nurses of Tabeeb Care Medical Services (TCMS) in Doha and the fifty-five clients of TCMS. The study was conducted on May 30, 2019 until October 30, 2019. The sampling design for the patient is the convenience sampling while purposive sampling was used for the nurses. The SBARC data collection was divided in four stages: pre-assessment, intervention, implementation, and evaluation. Using the descriptive and inferential statistics, results had been analyzed.

Results. The findings of this SBARC study had improved nurse-to-nurse interaction using the standard tool but not necessarily affect the patient satisfaction and length of stay.

Conclusions. Further study on the application of this tool would be in the corporate world and emergency services where improved interaction between professionals are necessary for improved practice and safer care.