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

One structure that was developed in the pediatric field and has been validated uses an IPASS mnemonic.

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