The development of a core outcome set for trials in surgical handover

Surgical handover between doctors is the exchange of information about a patient that occurs at the time of transfer of responsibility for the patient’s care. During hospitalisation for surgical conditions, these care handovers happen frequently. They are important because mistakes can lead to patient harm due to missed information, or incorrect information being shared between doctors. Unfortunately, the way handover is carried out is rarely the same between different hospitals.

Lots of research has been done to try to improve handover between surgical doctors, but the way this research is carried out differs from study to study. This makes it difficult to compare study results and apply them to the ‘real-world’. There is very little guidance out there to help researchers carry out this research effectively.

When we carry out a research study to try to improve something (such as handover), we use something called an ‘outcome’ to decide if what we did was successful. For example, if we were carrying out research to see if a certain painkiller was effective, we might ask patients to score their pain out of 10 after taking the medication. This is an example of an outcome, of which there are many different types.

A ‘core outcome set’ (COS) is an agreed group of outcomes that should always be looked at when we carry out research in a certain area, they are considered the most important (core) outcomes. We create core outcome sets by involving different groups of people and checking to see what their views are. The aim of this research study is to create a COS for studies that try to improve the surgical handover between doctors. This COS should be used by researchers who carry out future studies in this area. We are inviting three groups of people to take part in this study and sit on the steering committee for the project – Surgical healthcare workers, researchers, and patient and public partners. You fall into the third category. As this is a somewhat specialised area (research methodology), we will meet all applicants to discuss their suitability for the project online via MS Teams. We are looking for patient and public partners who have experience being treated in hospital as a surgical patient, and having had surgery (requiring at least an overnight stay). We are also looking for parents, carers, or family members of these surgical patients.

Further resources which may be of interest to you are included in the links below:

• A video explaining core outcome sets:

• Information leaflet on core outcome sets:
http://www.comet-initiative.org/assets/downloads/COMET%20Plain%20Language%20Summary%20v4.pdf

• These resources were developed by the COMET (Core Outcome Measures in Effectiveness Trials) initiative. The website for this initiative can be found here:
https://www.comet-initiative.org/