RESEARCHING AND TEACHING EFFECTIVE NURSING HANDOVER COMMUNICATION IN A HONG KONG HOSPITAL

Clinical handover – the transfer between clinicians of responsibility and accountability for patients and their care – is a pivotal, high-risk communicative event in hospital practice. Studies focusing on critical incidents, mortality, risk and patient harm in hospitals have highlighted ineffective communication – including incomplete and unstructured clinical handovers – as a major contributing factor. In this paper, we detail the 24 research and the Better Handover training we have now delivered to nurses at a bilingual hospital in Hong Kong. We first describe four identified areas where changes to handover practice are likely to improve patient safety and continuity of care: 1) Handovers would be safer and more consistent if nurses followed an agreed and systematic structure to sequence their presentation of handover information; 2) All incoming nurses need to actively engage with the handover by interacting to check, clarify and confirm information; 3) Outgoing nurses need to ensure the explicit transfer of responsibility by requiring confirmation and readback of key information, including instructions for the patient’s ongoing care; 4) All nurses present need access to the relevant documentation at the time of the handover, and need to be trained to use the verbal handover to add value.