"Get The Message": Utilization of the I-PASS Handoff Program in the Nuclear Medicine Workplace to Improve Communication and Reduce Medical Errors

Introduction: Nuclear medicine is directly involved with patient care and requires detailed communication for preparation, performance, treatments and interpretation of studies.

Communication failures can result in a variety of medical errors and adverse events.

We describe the importance of of hand-offs in nuclear medicine, particularly the I-PASS method to help improve study performance, and patient safety.

Methods: Communication failures are an important cause for sentinel events in medicine. In many cases, important portions of information may not be communicated , while health care providers felt it was communicated. Since most hand-offs are not standardized and variable within different institutions, it represents a complex too to learn, expecially with verbal and written handoffs.

The I-PASS mnemonic represents a more standardized method of communication, and stands for illness severity, patient summary, action list, situation awareness and contingency planning and synthesis by the receiver.

In the nuclear medicine workplace, where various physicians are involved from various specialities, it is important for communication and loops to be closed.

Results: There are many nuclear medicine procedures that require a handoff of instructions and information to improve patient outcomes and safety. This involves nuclear medicine staff and physicians. This will result in improved written and verbal handoff communications.

The I-PASS method can help in the implementation of communication and result in a more standardized process of handoffs. We discuss methods to improve education in handoffs, making it a more consistent tool for improving patient care.

Conclusions: Nuclear medicine staff are involved in providing instructions to patients for successful and uneventful procedures, treatments and studies. Failure to communicate and provide the appropriate hand-offs can result in adverse events and preventable errors.

We discuss the utilization of the I-PASS Mnemonic and technique to improve the process of hand-offs in nuclear medicine. We discuss the importance of teaching handoff techniques during residency and medical school as it is important to improve study outcomes.