Importance Of Handover Research Articles

Effective nursing shift handover in critical care: A concept analysis.

To explore the concept of effective shift handover in critical care settings.Ineffective handover is one of the leading causes of adverse events in healthcare settings. Nursing shift handover in the intensive care unit (ICU) is more complex and detailed than in other in-patient wards due to the complexity of medical issues experienced by ICU patients. It is, therefore, critical that nurses be able to conduct handover effectively. Despite the importance of handover, the definition and attributes of effective handover are not clearly understood.Walker and Avant's eight-step approach to concept analysis.Effective handover in nursing is an interactive process between two nurses, resulting in the direct transfer of adequate patient-specific recent information in a manner that creates a shared understanding of information. Its defining attributes are (1) content-related and (2) process-related attributes. The antecedents of effective handover are organizational support, interpersonal relationship, and work environment. Its consequences include patient and nurse satisfaction, improved care, and continuity of care. Empirical referents include several tools developed to measure some of the effective handover attributes.The definition provides a connotative meaning and is the first step toward concept validation and instrument development to measure effective handover practice in the ICU.

Is there a need for formal undergraduate patient handover training and could an educational workshop effectively provide this? A proof-of-concept study in a Scottish Medical School

BackgroundPoor communication between healthcare professionals is recognised as accounting for a significant proportion of adverse patient outcomes. In the UK, the General Medical Council emphasises effective handover (handoff) as an...

Training on handover of patient care within UK medical schools

Background: Much evidence exists to demonstrate that poor handover can directly impact patient safety. There have been calls for formal education on handover, but evidence to guide intervention design and implementation is limited. It is unclear how undergraduate medical schools are tackling this issue and what barrier or facilitators exist to handover education. We set out to determine curriculum objectives, teaching and assessment methods, as well as institutional attitudes towards handover within UK medical schools.Methods: A descriptive, non-experimental, cross-sectional study design was used. A locally developed online questionnaire survey was sent to all UK Medical Schools, after piloting. Descriptive statistics were calculated for closed-ended responses, and free text responses were analysed using a grounded theory approach, with constant comparison taking place through several stages of analysis.Results: Fifty percent of UK medical schools took part in the study. Nine schools (56%) reported having curriculum outcomes for handover. Significant variations in the teaching and assessments employed were found. Qualitative analysis yielded four key themes: the importance of handover as an education issue, when to educate on handover, the need for further provision of teaching and the need for validated assessment tools to support handover education.Conclusions: Whilst undergraduate medical schools recognised handover as an important education issue, they do not feel they should have the ultimate responsibility for training in this area and as such are responding in varying ways. Undergraduate medical educators should seek to reach consensus as to the extent of provision they will offer. Weaknesses in the literature regarding how to design such education have exacerbated the problem, but the contemporaneous and growing published evidence base should be employed by educators to address this issue.

Developing a guide to improve the quality of nurses’ handover

This article considers the importance of handover as a means of communicating important patient information from one nursing shift to the next. It describes the development of a guide, based on Essence of Care benchmarks, intended to improve the quality of nursing handover. A post implementation audit suggests that once staff were familiar with the guide, handovers became more structured and informative.