Standardising handovers to improve ambulance turnaround times (ATT)

East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) bring patients to NUH from across the East Midlands. Paramedics are often in hospitals waiting long times to handover a patient, meanwhile the public are often waiting in life threatening conditions for paramedics to attend.

A target has been set that ED should obtain handover within 15 minutes of ambulance arrival. Previously ATT was inconsistent and ineffective in turning around paramedics.

This abstract will show our successes in improving ATT and supporting the community to receive prompt care.

NUH set a standard of 90% of patients to be handed over within 15 minutes. This was deemed initially unachievable; we decided that maintaining lower percentage continuity would be a suitable project start point.

During the first months it was deemed that 60% of all handovers should be taken within 15 minutes consistently every day.

An Initial Assessment Specialist Team has been developed consisting of all members of the MDT. This team has created a concise but effective rapid handover template in which all handover nurses now use reducing time taken to handover therefore reducing paramedic length of stay.

We have achieved an increase of 50% from 2016. The time taken to handover has had a dramatic effect on ATT and we can now consistently turn around over 60% of ambulances in under 15 minutes on a daily basis.

Concluding this abstract; the specialist team continues to work together with EMAS. To keep increasing our daily percentage until 100% of ambulances are released within 15 minutes.

This is a thriving project in which ED’s can learn from and in the future we will be helping to effectively reducing their ambulance turnaround times.

For further information please contact: Luke Hobson (ED nurse) [email protected] Jenn Wardle-Miller (ED sister) [email protected]
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