Standardisation Strategies for Nursing Handovers in Paediatric Hospitalisation: A Scoping Review

Background/Objectives: To identify existing evidence on strategies for standardising nursing handovers in paediatric hospital settings, given their impact on communication, safety, and quality of care. International bodies such as the WHO and The Joint Commission recommend standardisation as a key measure to reduce patient safety incidents. Methods: An integrative review was conducted in December 2022 using Medline, Cochrane Library, Scopus, and CINAHL databases. The search strategy included documents published between 2012 and 2022, in Spanish, English, Catalan, French, and/or Portuguese. We screened according to inclusion criteria (professional nurses and hospitalisation) and exclusion criteria (intensive care and medical professionals) and tabulated the results according to concurrent themes. Methodological quality was independently assessed using CASPe Network tools, the MMAT, and STROBE checklist. The PRISMA-ScR guidelines were followed. Results: A total of 308 results were obtained, 139 were reviewed and 25 were accepted, assessing acceptable methodological quality in 19 (one randomised clinical trial, four systematic reviews, one integrative review, five non-randomised clinical trials, three observational studies, two qualitative studies, and three mixed-methods studies). Structuring and standardisation strategies are found in hospitalisation, including SBAR, I-PASS, and Flex 11. There are tools to assess the quality of patient handover, such as the Handover CEX Scale. Conclusions: There are tools for structuring patient handoffs that have obtained positive results in improving quality of care, although the results in the paediatric hospitalisation nursing setting are limited.