Sign out tools

Overview

• In Emergency Medicine, we sign out very frequently relative to other fields.
• Sign outs are common sources of preventable errors.
• Many structured approaches to sign out have been developed.
• Some of those structures have been studied and found to decrease preventable errors in sign out.

Procedure

The I-PASS mnemonic provides a framework for the patient handoff process as follows:

I: Illness severity

P: Patient summary

A: Action list

S: Situation awareness and contingency planning

S: Synthesis by receiver

References

Amy J. Starmer, Nancy D. Spector, Rajendu Srivastava, April D. Allen, Christopher P. Landrigan, Theodore C. Sectish, the I-PASS Study Group. I-PASS, a Mnemonic to Standardize Verbal Handoffs.Pediatrics February 2012, VOLUME 129 / ISSUE 2