Date on Paper

8-2025

Document Type

Doctoral Paper

Degree Name

D.N.P.

Department

Nursing

Committee Chair

Adelstein, Katharine

Committee Member

Albers, Courtney

Author's Keywords

SBAR; communication; security; inpatient psychiatric unit; mental health; psychiatric nursing

Abstract

Inpatient psychiatric units provide assistance to patients experiencing acute mental health crises such as psychosis or suicidal ideation. Patients experiencing acute mental health crises can sometimes become agitated or aggressive towards staff, themselves, or other patients, which can pose a significant risk to everyone’s safety. The purpose of the project is to improve staff satisfaction and collaboration by standardizing the interdisciplinary communication between hospital security and nursing staff. Over a period of two weeks, the facilitator educated security and unit staff on a SBAR card during shift huddle to implement on the unit in the event of an acute mental health crisis. The two main outcomes are the satisfaction with interdisciplinary communication between security and unit staff and the usage and adherence to guidelines on approaching an acute mental health crisis on the unit. The new tool was used over an intervention period of four weeks. During the implementation period, the utilization rate was obtained, and the unit staff and security were given pre- and post-intervention surveys evaluating their satisfaction with interdisciplinary communication as well as the ease of use of the SBAR tool. The data collected showed a utilization rate of 44% and satisfaction rate of 82%. A Wilcoxon Signed-Ranks test was used to compare the pre- and post-intervention survey scores with the test indicating a statistically significant difference with Z = -2.941 and p = 0.003. Overall, the SBAR card intervention appeared to improve satisfaction in communication between the security team and unit staff.

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