The Experiences of Acute Care Nurses with Patient-Engaged Bedside Repor

Handoff communication should occur when exchanging patient assignments in the acute care hospital setting. Research indicates nurses are resistant or reluctant to involve the patient in this exchange of information. The purpose of this original basic qualitative study, which employed Husserl and Heidegger's approach of phenomenology, was to explore the lived experiences and perceptions of acute care nurses who participate in patient-centered bedside handoff within a small rural community hospital in North Carolina. Semi-structured interviews using open-ended questions were utilized to collect rich, contextual data until data saturation occurred. Open and axial coding of the data documented in a code/theme frequency table facilitated the discovery of central themes within the data including patient care empowerment, improved flow of patient information, and interpersonal communication. The evidence from this original basic qualitative study, aligns with the published literature regarding, practice change and implementation, resistance to change, work unit culture, coordination of care, and patient perspective, and supports making a proposal to the hospital's administration for bedside reporting education, policy making and enforcement, and bedside reporting compliance validation.