Nurses’ perceptions of mandatory bedside clinical handovers: An Australian hospital study

Translation, Cross-Cultural Adaptation, and Validation of Measurement Instruments: A Practical Guideline for Novice Researchers

Cross-cultural validation of self-reported measurement instruments for research is a long and complex process, which involves specific risks of bias that could affect the research process and results. Furthermore, it requires researchers to have a wide range of technical knowledge about the translation, adaptation and pre-test aspects, their purposes and options, about the different psychometric properties, and the required evidence for their assessment and knowledge about the quantitative data processing and analysis using statistical software. This article aimed: 1) identify all guidelines and recommendations for translation, cross-cultural adaptation, and validation within the healthcare sciences; 2) describe the methodological approaches established in these guidelines for conducting translation, adaptation, and cross-cultural validation; and 3) provide a practical guideline featuring various methodological options for novice researchers involved in translating, adapting, and validating measurement instruments. Forty-two guidelines on translation, adaptation, or cross-cultural validation of measurement instruments were obtained from "CINAHL with Full Text" (via EBSCO) and "MEDLINE with Full Text". A content analysis was conducted to identify the similarities and differences in the methodological approaches recommended. Bases on these similarities and differences, we proposed an eight-step guideline that includes: a) forward translation; 2) synthesis of translations; 3) back translation; 4) harmonization; 5) pre-testing; 6) field testing; 7) psychometric validation, and 8) analysis of psychometric properties. It is a practical guideline because it provides extensive and comprehensive information on the methodological approaches available to researchers. This is the first methodological literature review carried out in the healthcare sciences regarding the methodological approaches recommended by existing guidelines.

Enhancing effective healthcare communication in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Considerations for research, teaching, policy, and practice

Objective

In this article we present a conceptual framework for enhancing effective healthcare communication in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.

Methods

Through an iterative, deliberative dialogue approach, we, as experts from a variety of health professions and academic disciplines, worked together to identify core values and considerations for healthcare communication across numerous health professions and disciplines and within research, teaching, policy, and practice contexts.

Results

The framework developed includes five core values at its centre: equitable, inclusive, evidence-based, collaborative, reflective. Around this are concentric circles showing key elements of collaborators, modality, context, and purpose. Each of these is explored.

Conclusion

This work may support benchmarking for healthcare providers, researchers, policymakers, and educators across a breadth of professions to help improve communication in clinical practice. The framework will also help to identify areas across disciplines that are shared and potentially idiosyncratic for various professions to promote interprofessional recognition, education, and collaboration.

Innovation

This framework is designed to start conversations, to form the foundation of a dialogue about the priorities and key considerations for developing teaching curricula, professional development, and research programs related to healthcare communication, providing a set of values specifically for the unique contexts of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. It can also be used to guide interdisciplinary healthcare professionals in advancing research, teaching, policy, and practice related to healthcare communication.

Evaluating the Methodological Approaches of Cross-Cultural Adaptation of the Bedside Handover Attitudes and Behaviours Questionnaire into Portuguese

Nurse managers need culturally adapted assessment instruments to support the implementation of change to Nursing Bedside Handover (NBH) in healthcare institutions. This study aimed to cross-culturally adapt the Bedside Handover Attitudes and Behaviours (BHAB) questionnaire to the Portuguese context and evaluate the methodological approaches used for this purpose. To guide this study, we followed a guideline for cross-cultural translation and adaptation measurement instruments in healthcare. The results of the content validity testing suggested that the BHAB questionnaire is a valid instrument for use in the Portuguese context. To obtain these results we showed 1) using of a new methodological approach, the dual focus, to resolve the divergences and ambiguities in the translators' committee and the multi-professional committee; 2) the lack of a conceptual definition of the construct of the instrument as a requirement to retain items with I-CVI <0.70 after validity relevance pretesting and 3) the cognitive debriefing and relevance pretesting as methodological approaches which can be used alone or together to reinforce the evaluation of cultural relevance of the items. We concluded there is a need for guidelines to support the decision-making process of healthcare researchers with comprehensive information about the different methodological approaches they can follow.

Using a simulation-based approach to promote structured and interactive nursing clinical handover: a pre- and post-evaluation pilot study in bilingual Hong Kong

Effective clinical nursing handover involves the transfer of responsibility and accountability for patient care between nurses, leading to better patient safety and continuity of care. Nurses in bilingual contexts, such as Hong Kong - where nurses are trained in English but communicate in Cantonese - may find it challenging to deliver a safe clinical handover. This article reports a pilot study in which a simulation-based approach is being developed to enhance nursing handover with structured and interactive interactions, using handover protocols such as ISBAR (introduction, situation, background, assessment, recommendation and readback) and CARE-team (connect, ask, respond, empathise) protocols in a bilingual context. The study has a pre- and post-evaluation design involving a questionnaire survey before and after a 4-hour workshop. Fourteen selected bilingual nurses in Hong Kong were trained according to the ISBAR and CARE-team protocols, and their perceptions of complete and structured handovers were evaluated before and after training using the questionnaire. The nurses reported that they were more self-confident in their handover experiences, with a deeper understanding of ISBAR and CARE-team protocols after the simulation-based training intervention, leading to better (i.e., more structured and interactive) clinical handover between nurses. Overall, the staff perceived their handover communication to have improved using simulation-based training.

Enhancing person-centred care in inpatient mental health settings through supported person-side handover: a multi method study

BACKGROUND

: Many nursing contexts have introduced bedside handover, where the person in care participates in the transfer of clinical information, with benefits for person, carers, and clinicians. This type of handover has been implemented across a number of mental health settings, but there is limited evidence regarding implementation approaches or of practice change. This study reports the development and evaluation of a co-produced education and support package.

AIM

: To evaluate changes in nurses' practice regarding bedside (person-side) handover following implementation of a structured education and support package.

DESIGN

: Multi-method design incorporating nurse surveys and chart audit.

METHODS

: The survey and audit were conducted in 2019-2020 on two inpatient mental health units in a metropolitan health service immediately prior to, and 6 months after, implementation, with 70 survey responses and 52 files audited. Non-parametric tests assessed change, and text comments were reported.

RESULTS

: Significant improvements were observed in nurses' reports of confidence, the ability to maintain privacy, identified benefits for the person and in information transfer. In contrast, the chart audit identified no change in documentation of this practice.

CONCLUSIONS

: The implementation of a co-produced education and support package demonstrated positive practice change in engaging people receiving care in handover. This approach to handover provides increased opportunity for nurses to work in partnership with people receiving mental healthcare, facilitating collaborative person-centred care and shared decision making.

Factors associated with nurses' perceptions, their communication skills and the quality of clinical handover in the Hong Kong context

Background

Clinical handover is a pivotal, high-risk communicative event because it involves the transfer of responsibility and accountability for patients and their care. Nurses’ perceptions and their communication skills inevitably impact on their ability of clinical handover. Limited studies have explored nurses’ handover practice in the Hong Kong context. This study aimed to identify factors associated with and specific impact paths between the quality, communication skills and nurses’ perceptions on clinical handover.

Methods

A questionnaire survey was conducted immediately after the nurses’ training in effective handover communication. A convenience sample of 206 bilingual nursing staff from a local hospital in Hong Kong participated in this paper-and-pencil survey adopted from the Nurses Handover Perceptions Questionnaire survey.

Results

The path analysis revealed that except the opportunity to ask questions and high perceptions of the ISBAR communication protocol, other factors were significantly correlated with improved quality of handover. In addition, nurses who had updated information were likely to ask more questions and obtain a better understanding of the patient care plan during handover.

Conclusions

The quality of nursing handover depended on the degree of nurses’ grasp of the patient care plan. The ISBAR communication protocol was considered helping nurses to improve their communication skills with other colleagues and indirectly enhance patient’s safety. However, although ISBAR facilitated nurses to structure clearer handover communication, it was not the most important predictive factor for determining handover quality.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12912-021-00624-0.

A narrative inquiry approach to understanding senior intensive care nurses' experiences of working with new graduate nurses

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

To report a qualitative inquiry exploring senior registered nurses' stories of experience working with new graduate nurses in the intensive care unit.

BACKGROUND

While new graduate nurses' perceptions of transitioning into professional practice in the intensive care unit have been examined, few studies have explored the experiences of the senior registered nurses working alongside them.

DESIGN

A narrative inquiry methodology informed by Dewey's (1938) theory of experience.

METHODS

Individual in-depth, unstructured, interactive interviews were conducted with five senior registered nurses. The inquirer co-composed individual narrative accounts with each participant. Narrative inquiry's three commonplaces of temporality, sociality and place formed the lens of analysis. Thematic analysis identified two overarching threads that resonated across the narrative accounts. This inquiry adheres to COREQ checklist reporting.

RESULTS

The overarching threads 'Reverberations' and 'Caring' depict the experiences of senior registered nurses. 'It's Dangerous', 'Patrolling Like Surf Lifesavers', 'We Carry Them', 'Survival Mode' and 'Enjoyable Moments' are minor threads describing the challenges, while 'I've Been There', 'They Must Ask Questions' and 'Not In My Backyard' reveal their insights.

CONCLUSIONS

Working with new graduate nurses increased senior registered nurses' patient surveillance and workload, contributing to stress, pressure and feeling overwhelmed. However, senior registered nurses felt an obligation to care for new graduate nurses, who they perceived as still acquiring the skills to autonomously care for critically ill patients. Therefore, senior registered nurses require support themselves.

RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE

Senior registered nurses perceive workplace constraints as impeding their capacity to provide sufficient support and surveillance to new graduate nurses. The gap between new graduate nurses' clinical capacity and patients' needs underpins senior registered nurses' recommendation that new graduate nurses should not be placed in intensive care units unless additional workforce support is provided, safeguarding their development as well as patient safety.

Involving mental health consumers in nursing handover: A qualitative study of nursing views of the practice and its implementation

Nursing handover occurs between shifts and is an important means of communication and information exchange around consumer care. The involvement of consumers in nursing handover, known as 'bedside handover', is well established within general health settings and promotes a patient-centred approach to care. Bedside handover represents an opportunity for mental health settings to consolidate recovery-oriented principles, albeit with some unique challenges in the way that involving consumers in nursing handover is implemented. This qualitative descriptive study explores the views of nursing staff and nursing managers about involving consumers in nursing handover and the process of implementation across five mental health inpatient units in Australia. The study took place in a local health district covering regional and rural areas of New South Wales that had issued a directive to implement bedside handover. The consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research (COREQ) checklist was applied to this study. Six focus groups were held with nursing staff (n = 22), and eleven individual interviews were undertaken with nursing managers to explore their perceptions of bedside handover and its implications for nursing practice. The data were analysed using thematic analysis. Data from focus groups and interviews were analysed separately and then combined to generate three themes: (i) the mental health context is different; (ii) protecting consumer privacy and confidentiality; and (iii) it might make things worse. The findings provide insights into both the challenges, and the process of involving consumers in nursing handover within mental health settings and provides guidance for future implementation.

An Evidence-Based, Nursing Handover Standard for a Multisite Public Hospital in Switzerland: Web-Based, Modified Delphi Study

BACKGROUND

Ineffective communication procedures create openings for errors when health care professionals fail to transfer complete, consistent information. Deficient or absent clinical handovers, or failures to transfer information, responsibility, and accountability, can have severe consequences for hospitalized patients. Clinical handovers are practiced every day, in many ways, in all institutional health care settings.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to design an evidence-based, nursing handover standard for inpatients for use at shift changes or internal transfers between hospital wards.

METHODS

We carried out a modified, multiround, web-based, Delphi data collection survey of an anonymized panel sample of 264 nurse experts working at a multisite public hospital in Switzerland. Each survey round was built on responses from the previous one. The surveys ended with a focus group discussion consisting of a randomly selected panel of participants to explain why items for the evidence-based clinical nursing handover standard were selected or not selected. Items had to achieve a consensus of ≥70% for selection and inclusion.

RESULTS

The study presents the items selected by consensus for an evidence-based nursing handover standard for inpatients for use at shift changes or internal transfers. It also presents the reasons why survey items were or were not included.

CONCLUSIONS

This modified Delphi survey method enabled us to develop a consensus- and evidence-based nursing handover standard now being trialed at shift changes and the internal transfers of inpatients at our multisite public hospital in Switzerland.