Early on in nursing school. giving report to a physician, your instructor, or another nurse may very well terrify you - I know it terrified me at first, and still gives me the jitters today.
SBAR, if you haven't heard of it yet, is a helpful framework for giving report. It stands for "Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation".
The point of an SBAR is to give a brief, focused, but informative report of how your patient is doing. Of course, it's easy to lose sight of being concise and confident whn we're in a situation where we need to report to someone wiser and more experienced. It comes with practice. Now, take for example...
S: This is Nurse B on telemetry. Mr. John K in room 180 is recovering from a bradycardic episode.
B: He is a 55 year-old male who came to the ER with complaints of severe dizziness.
A: He had a heartrate of 36 beats per minute when I came in to do his vitals an hour after giving him his 50 mg of atenolol as scheduled. The charge nurse and I suspected beta-blocker toxicity. We gave glucagon and his heartrate is back up to 76, he's awake and oriented.
R: We're continuing to take vitals every fifteen minutes for the next few hours until he is stable. I would like to see if we could change his medication order to re-evaluate the dosage of his beta-blocker.
Now, I'll admit. This was probably not a brilliant SBAR either because I am hopeless at making up information on imaginary patients. But regardless, I think we can agree that it's better than a frantic, disorganized report like this:
Hi, Doctor. It's Nurse B. John up here has a really low heart rate and I want to get him a different dose of atenolol. We gave him glucagon and he's doing better now.
Now, granted, we won't always remember the exact right thing to say. We won't always be completely calm and able to compose ourselves. I know I haven't mastered the art of the SBAR yet either. But, practice makes perfect!
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