Application Theory to Research on Nursing Handoff Research Paper

Nursing Handoff Communication

The delivery of patient care services is usually characterized by the involvement of various professionals in the healthcare team, especially nurses. In most cases, the delivery of care to patients involves various nurses with different functions at different stages in this process. Given the nature of their work, nurses transfer responsibility and authority of care to other nurses to help ensure continuity of care and promote patient safety. This implies that medical communication and competence plays an important role in the transfer of authority and responsibility of care from one nurse to another. This is primarily because nursing handoffs involves medical communication, which must be effective in order to enhance patient safety through ensuring continuity of care.

The theoretical framework for conducting this study on nursing handoffs is communication competence and medical communication behaviors. To this extent, the researcher assumes that nurses possess medical communication competence that is essential during the delivery of care. Moreover, the researcher assumes that these professionals have capability to use communication competence to govern their communication behaviors when transferring the responsibility and authority of care to another nurse (Streeter, 2010). Based on these assumptions, the researcher believes that competent medical communication between nurses during handoff or at change of shift occurs when it helps in ensuring continuity of care. Therefore, if the communication hinders continuity of care, it cannot be considered competent medical communication.

One of the theoretical propositions for this study on nursing handoff is that competent medical communication results in continuity of care and improved patient safety. Secondly, ineffective nursing handoffs are usually brought by poor communication behaviors since such behaviors hinder effective and seamless information exchange. The third theoretical proposition is that an effective handoff is determined largely by the nurse's use of specific communication skills and behaviors during the transfer of responsibility of patient care to another nurse.

Application of Theory

The focus of this study is to examine the major factors that contribute to ineffective nursing handoffs and how this process can be improved to enhance patient safety through ensuring continuity of care. Consequently, the researcher will examine communication skills and behaviors that contribute to effective or quality nursing handoffs. This will be followed by an exploration of whether these communication skills and behaviors are applied by nurses in various healthcare settings during transfer of care. Once this is determined, the researcher will proceed to…