“All right, everybody, let’s huddle up,” said every coach before every sports game. Who else says it? Nurses!
Nursing huddles—also called safety huddles—are quick, stand-up meetings facilitating healthcare team cohesion and patient safety awareness at the beginning of a shift.
Keep reading to define nurse huddles and their purpose, discover how huddling can improve patient care, and find huddle examples and templates for best practice.
What Is a Nursing Huddle?
The definition of a nursing huddle is as follows:
- It is a quick meeting at the start of the shift or workday (depending on the clinical setting).
- It is usually at most 10 minutes long.
- Clinicians share general information about workload, patient flow, and safety concerns.
- Huddle participants remain standing.
If you want to view a little humor around nursing huddles, you can follow the content creator Josh Evers on YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook. Here is a short comedy video about nursing huddles:
What’s the Difference between Handovers and Nursing Huddles?
In some settings, the terms “handover” and “huddle” may be used interchangeably, but the meaning of huddle differs. Although both actions provide a platform for sharing clinical information between parties, they each serve a different purpose, as follows:
- Handovers: Shift handovers or hand-offs occur to exchange key clinical information and transfer responsibilities from the clinician ending their shift to the clinician beginning their shift.
- Huddles: Huddles share information for the purpose of creating situational awareness and identifying safety concerns so that staff can prevent or respond appropriately and effectively.
How Can Nursing Huddles Improve Patient Care?
A shift or morning huddle isn’t just another meeting for staff. It’s an approach specifically aimed at addressing patient safety concerns and fostering team collaboration, and the impact is backed up by research.
According to the published report titled “Improving Patient Safety and Team Communication through Daily Huddles”:
“huddles have been shown to improve patient safety in a range of areas, such as wrong-site surgery, medication errors, poor hand hygiene, unrecognized clinical deterioration, serious safety events, and near misses.”
The benefits of huddles have a ripple effect that also improves overall patient quality of care. In the journal article titled “Huddles and their effectiveness at the frontlines of clinical care: a scoping review”, data analyzed from 158 studies found the following:
- Around 44 percent of studies concluded huddles resulted in better clinical patient outcomes.
- About 24 percent reported a reduction in medication errors and adverse drug events.
- Twenty percent reported lower rates of other adverse outcomes.
Other common outcomes reported in huddle studies include the following:
- Higher levels of individual and group accountability
- Improved collective awareness, which helps to identify factors that place patients at risk of harm
- Reduced interruptions during shifts
- Increased sense of community, cohesion, and trust among the healthcare team
Who Participates in Nursing Huddles?
Nursing huddles aren’t just for the nursing team. Depending on the setting, the following healthcare professionals may participate in the huddle:
- Charge nurse
- Nurse manager
- Registered nurses
- Licensed practical/vocational nurses
- Certified nursing assistants
- Unlicensed assistive personnel
- Allied healthcare professionals (e.g., physical or speech therapists, social workers, etc.)
What Topics Should Be Discussed in Huddles?
The topics discussed in huddles vary depending on the clinical setting. Nevertheless, the following are themes typically present:
- Patient safety
- Patient flow
- Unit, department, or facility initiatives taking place that may impact work
- Clinician workload
Challenges of Nursing Huddles
Despite the utility and benefits of routine nursing huddles, barriers and challenges must be considered and overcome.
- Some nurses may feel that a nursing huddle is yet another draw on their time, creating additional pressure on their workload for the shift.
- Depending on the setting, some nurses may be excluded from the huddle due to their perceived junior status or because they are covering duties for a nurse attending the huddle.
- A lack of perceived impact may influence attitudes in a negative direction.
Benefits of Nursing Huddles
Effective nursing huddles benefit patient outcomes and a team’s communication.
- Routine huddles provide structured settings for everyone to hear the same information simultaneously. This helps to avoid the pitfalls of misinformation from quick side conversations throughout the shift.
- Huddles foster communication and strategic thinking from different perspectives.
- Huddles in nursing allow healthcare teams to plan for potential risks and safety concerns instead of simply reacting.
Tips for Implementation and Best Practice in Nursing Huddles
As previously explored, nursing huddles come with both benefits and challenges. Implement huddles in nursing with these best practice tips:
- Be consistent: Huddles must be a reliable and expected part of the day or shift. They should occur at the same time and in the same location so that staff members always know when and where to show up. Consistency will encourage staff engagement.
- Remain standing: This will help ensure the meeting remains brief and doesn’t get bogged down in lengthy discussions.
- Assign a leader: Although input from everyone is essential, someone should facilitate the meeting, ensuring it remains brief, stays on track, and maintains respectful and supportive communication.
- Make the agenda visible: The meeting agenda should be visible to everyone participating, e.g., on a whiteboard or a digital huddle board.
- Encourage input from everyone: Everyone in the huddle should be invited to share in some way. This can easily be accomplished by giving everyone a turn clockwise.
- Keep the discussion on point: The objective of the huddle is to share information and draw attention to concerns; it is not a problem-solving strategy think tank. After the huddle, issues can be delegated appropriately for resolution.
- Documentation: Take notes or assign someone to document the issues and insights shared in the team huddle. Proper documentation of the huddles will allow for tracking their impact on safety and cohesion and sharing progress with the healthcare team.
- Close with encouragement: End the meeting with gratitude for participation and encouragement for addressing the day’s impending challenges.
Nursing Huddle Templates
Fostering situational awareness among the huddle team members in just 10 minutes sounds like a big ask. The Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) recommends a structured approach and a visible agenda to optimize the benefits of huddle meetings. The following is an example template of a huddle agenda:
- Provide a review of the safety concerns from the previous day or shift.
- Identify potential safety concerns for the present day or shift.
- Share updates on any long-standing issues or concerns for patient flow or patient safety.
- Ask the team for input.
- Finish with announcements and any schedule changes.
Here’s another example of a huddle agenda template:
- Share patient safety successes from the previous day/shift.
- Review patient safety concerns from the previous day/shift.
- Identify current patient safety risks.
- Review the plan to address current patient safety risks.
- Share progress on patient safety resolutions.
- Make announcements.
What’s Next for Nursing Huddles? Future Trends
The popularity of nursing huddles has already spread. Some healthcare settings are also using tiered huddles to allow overlap between system departments, units, and levels of authority, and others are using leadership huddles for high-level executives and administrators. Technology is already making documentation and progress tracking for huddles easier through electronic tracking tools and digital visual huddle boards. What’s next?
Have you huddled recently? Browse local PRN shifts and get in on a huddle near you.
