UTILITY OF A STANDARDIZED SIGN-OUT CARD FOR NEW MEDICAL INTERNS

Conscientious sign-out between medical interns is important for the co ntinuity of care of hospitalized patients, We developed a standardized sign-out card that prompted the intern going off duty to transmit pat ient care information to the intern on call, The card was tested in a prospective, randomized, controlled trial in which one group of intern s used the card, and another group did not, Any instance of poor sign- out was reported on a questionnaire completed by the intern who had be en on call the previous night, The group using the sign-out cards repo rted poor sign-out on 8 nights (5.8% of questionnaires), and the contr ol group reported it on 17 nights (14.9% of questionnaires, p = .016), The card was time-effective and inexpensive, resulted in more complet e data recording, and possibly decreased the morbidity associated with poor sign-out.