Let’s handover our patients to the highest quality of anesthesiology care

Abstract

Effective communication is one of the most significant skills in medical practice and should be strongly emphasized and taught during pre- and postgraduate training. The World Health Organization has included communication during patient care handovers among its top five patient safety initiatives since 2006 (1). Although it is usually perceived as a ‘physician to patient’ interaction, the definition also includes the ‘physician to physician’ communication. However, the failure of healthcare professionals to communicate is a major problem worldwide. Most preventable adverse events in medicine are because of communication errors, while more than half of these occur in relation to patient handover (2).