Enhancing Team Collaboration in the Emergency Department at Kigali University Teaching Hospital: The Effect of SBAR Communication Training

Background: Teamwork in clinical settings and especially in emergency department requires straightforward, clear and consistent communication interdisciplinary. The lack of effective communication among healthcare providers impact patient care safety, misdiagnosis, and increased treatment delays and medication errors. This also increases patient morbidity and mortality.

Objective: To examine the effect of Situation Background, Assessment, and Recommendation communication education on the competencies of inter-professional team collaboration.

Methods: This study was interventional conducted at the emergency department of CHUK. A self-administered questionnaire was completed prior to, during and after the training. Descriptive and inferential statistics were computed evaluate the association between communication and some demographic characteristics and to test whether there is a significant improvement in communication after the intervention.

Results: The study found that the majority of participants we female, 60% (N=18) were and 40% (N=12) were male. A high number of participants (63.3 %) were aged between 30 and 35 years and 66.7% (20) had an advanced diploma (A1), and 33.3 % (10) had a bachelor’s or master’s degree. Lastly, 63.3 % (19) had working experience between 6 and 10 years. After the training, the findings showed an increased perception of effective communication and collaboration among nurses (from 58 (range 31–97) to 64 (range 25–97); p < 0.001), an increase in unplanned intensive care unit (from 13.1/1000 to 14.8/1000) admissions and a decrease in unexpected deaths (from 0.99/1000 to 0.34/1000) admissions.

Discussion: The findings showed that there was a statistical significant increase of the nurses’ competencies in inter-professional collaboration.

Conclusion: This study concludes that SBAR communication education for emergency nurses increases their communication skills and may thus increase the care to patients.

Recommendation: Conducting this study on large number of population will assist in evaluation of the contribution of SBAR to the survivorship and recovery of patients as the main aim of the work of nurses and doctors.