Learning Objective #1: Transferring patients to have examination is an essential and frequently occurred task in the patient transfer center

Learning Objective #2: . The achievement of this project not only promotes the safety during patient transfer but also refines the image of the hospital.

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Transferring patients to have examination is an essential and frequently occurred task in the patient transfer center, but nature of the service is full of risk and is poor cost-benefit. However, it is still an important issue to avoid failure of patient transfer, which may cause injury to patients during the transmitting process. Therefore a project to promote the safety during the patient transfer process is indicated. From Feb. 5, 2007 to Feb. 9, 2007, 2150 patients admitted into the general ward of a teaching hospital in the Northern Taiwan were recruited. Several indicators, including (1) transfer failure rate caused by the transferring staff was 7.16 %, (2) the rate of insecure transfer of the equipment was 0.09%, (3) the rate of inadequate preparation for transferring equipment was 72.07%, and (4) delay of the patient transfer caused by wait for the elevator greater than 20 mins, have been investigated in the study. Education for personnel's incumbency, fulfilling the security check table, standard procedures for patient transfer, cross-department communication and the elevator controls have been used to improve the safety during patient transfer. Dramatic improvements of (1) transfer failure rate caused by the transferring staff was 0 %, (2)the rate of insecure transfer of the equipment was 0 %, (3)the rate of inadequate preparation for transferring equipment was 23.6 % (32 % drop), and (4) average delay of the patient transfer caused by wait for the elevator was 4 mins, have been achieved. The achievement of this project not only promotes the safety during patient transfer but also refines the image of the hospital.