Does standardisation improve post-operative anaesthesia handoffs? Meta-analyses on provider, patient, organisational, and handoff outcomes

Anaesthesia handoffs are associated with negative outcomes (e.g. inappropriate treatments, post-operative complications, and in-hospital mortality). To minimise these adverse outcomes, federal bodies (e.g. Joint Commission) have mandated handoff standardisation. Due to the proliferation of handoff interventions and research, there is a need to meta-analyze anaesthesia handoffs. Therefore, we performed meta-analyses on the provider, patient, organisational, and handoff outcomes related to post-operative anaesthesia handoff protocols. We meta-analysed 41 articles with post-operative anaesthesia handoffs that implemented a standardised handoff protocol. Compared to no standardisation, a standardised post-operative anaesthesia handoff changed provider outcomes with an OR of 4.03 (95% CI 3.20–5.08), patient outcomes with an OR of 1.49 (95% CI 1.32–1.69), organisational outcomes with an OR of 4.25 (95% CI 2.51–7.19), handoff outcomes with an OR of 8.52 (95% CI 7.05–10.31). Our meta-analyses demonstrate that standardised post-operative anaesthesia handoffs altered patient, provider, organisational, and handoff outcomes. Practitioner Summary: We conducted meta-analyses to assess the effects of post-operative anaesthesia handoff standardisation on provider, patient, organisational, and handoff outcomes. Our findings suggest that standardised post-operative anaesthesia handoffs changed all listed outcomes in a positive direction. We discuss the implications of these findings as well as notable limitations in this literature base.