Abstract

EMS professionals, who are medically trained first responder personnel, act as a collaborative unit in their effort to care for the sick and injured patients being transported from the scene of an incident to the hospital. In this short window of time, there is a plethora of information that the EMS staff are collecting about the patient?s history, vitals, and changing medical state, all of which have to be documented and handed over to the ED staff upon arrival at the hospital. In an ideal world, this handover process is smooth, succinct, and thorough. However, this is not always the case. In this chapter, the patient handoff process will be examined, along with the common pitfalls and areas in which improvements are needed.