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SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article

Front. Health Serv.

Sec. Health Policy and Management

Volume 5 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frhs.2025.1380948

The Use of Introduction, Situation, Background, Assessment and Recommendation (ISBAR) Handover in the COVID-19 Pandemic and Non-COVID Clinical Settings: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Provisionally accepted
Carlo  LazzariCarlo Lazzari*Marco  RabottiniMarco Rabottini
  • International Centre for Healthcare and Medical Education, Bristol, UK, Bristol, United Kingdom

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Introduction. The introduction, situation, background, assessment, and recommendation (ISBAR) approach to clinical handovers assists healthcare providers in sharing information about patients within clinical teams and across health sectors while reducing information gaps and medical errors. However, despite its significance, uncertainties remain about the clear outcomes of applying ISBAR and training, especially in settings managing COVID-19 and those not dealing with the pandemic.Methods. This review has been prepared following the PRISMA guidelines. All the selected articles underwent a progressive check for biases and validity through GRADE-pro GDT and ROB-2 as per Cochrane guidelines. This review utilized a meta-analysis of 29 studies and a critical narrative review of seminal articles to condense the non-numerical findings. All articles were checked for heterogeneity with I2 coefficient. The extracted effect size was the Common Language Effect Size (CLES), with 95% confidence intervals.and efficacy among health care practitioners, improves interprofessional communication, reduces medical errors, and enhances patient safety.Our systematic review confirms that ISBAR handover improved the quality of care during the COVID-19 pandemic and non-COVID clinical practice. The limitation of this study is related to the lack of randomized controlled trials and blinding. Almost all studies were cross-sectional, which only provides information regarding associations but not causation.

Keywords: Handover, Handoff, ISBAR, SBAR, COVID-19, Outcome, Systematic review, Meta-analysis

Received: 02 Feb 2024; Accepted: 22 Jul 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Lazzari and Rabottini. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Carlo Lazzari, International Centre for Healthcare and Medical Education, Bristol, UK, Bristol, United Kingdom

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