In the UK, knowledge transfer is most commonly identified as building collaborative partnerships between researchers and industry, stakeholder engagement and communication, results and performance management linked back to Research Councils and their commissioning (HMSO, 2006). This editorial provides a useful interpretation of knowledge transfer applied to the Australian health care system. The importance of accurate information being transferred with patients entering or leaving the ICU has been highlighted in two UK publications linked to critical care practice as a response to reviewing patient safety (NICE, 2007; NPSA, 2007). These documents are important comparators to examine when considering differences and similarities in the management of patient safety in two different health care contexts. Like many other industrialized countries, the UK has also embraced the concerns over patient safety as part of a national quality management strategy aimed at reducing adverse events in British Hospitals. This programme has been driven by the World Health Organization (2004) with a focus of developing international comparisons, methods and standards for reporting adverse events that compromise patient safety. In the UK, the Safer Patient Initiative is co-ordinated by the Health Foundation (2008) (in partnership with the Institute of Health Improvement) and has identified a number of measures to improve standards of patient safety and care experience. This includes, reducing the incidence of preventable deaths, infection rates and cardiac arrest calls. Breakdowns in communication, in particular, have been identified as a factor accounting for failures in care delivery and untoward adverse events. To rectify this, the use of structured approaches to communication has been proposed as a solution to improve outcomes of care and patient safety (Haig et al., 2006). As discussed in this editorial, the Situation, Background, Assessment and Recommendation (SBAR) communication tool can promote enhanced communication, problem-solving and information sharing among members of the multidisciplinary team, which results in improvements in patient management (Carroll, 2006; Hohenhaus, 2006). From a nursing perspective, the tool encourages staff to seek advice or propose timely interventions. It has also been demonstrated that these benefits and having a shared language for reporting on patients and situations can translate to a sustained decrease the number of adverse critical incidents and medication errors (Haig et al., 2006). However, rigorous evidence of the effectiveness of SBAR is limited, and its integration into the National Health Service (NHS) has not been described in the UK literature. Consequently, at sites which the Health Foundation is overseeing, use of the SBAR communication tool is being evaluated to determine its role in promoting greater collaboration between health care providers and in improving the safety of patients.