PATIENT CARE HANDOVER A STANDARDISED FORMAT

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PATIENT CARE HANDOVER- A STANDARDISED FORMAT
Clinical Leadership Programme. Powys tLHB

• Janet Bethell
• Machynlleth Hospital

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Ward Based Handover

• A Definition
• The necessary communication between nursing
  staff, during shift changeover periods,
  regarding patient care.
• COMMUNICATION

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Why Change?

• To improve patient care - nursing staff will be
  better informed so can deliver care to a higher
  standard.
• To encourage a more consistent exchange of
  information.
• To increase the efficiency of handover.

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Project Objectives

• To standardise Patient Care Handover
• To give accurate, appropriate and adequate
  information at every handover.
• Staff to have sufficient information at handover
  to be able to deliver a high standard of care
  safely regardless of shift patterns.

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Current Handover Constraints

• CONTENT variable quality, patient records not
  consulted at handover, is information accurate
  and up to date?
• TIME is there sufficient time at change of
  shift to give adequate handover?
• PLACE consider confidentiality. Is bedside
  handover appropriate? Need staff to cover ward
  during handover.
  

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CONTENT OF HANDOVER

• Protocol for Ward Based Patient Care Handovers
  (not yet approved) identifies 16 different pieces
  of information per patient which should be handed
  over.
• What do nurses consider to be necessary?

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Questionnaire for Ward Based Nursing Staff (see
handout)

• To discover what information trained nursing
  staff consider to be most important.
• To discover what information untrained nursing
  staff consider to be most important.
• To discover how often this information is
  communicated.

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Questionnaire Results see display

• Highlighted some interesting differences in what
  trained and untrained staff deemed to be
  necessary information to start a shift.
• Highlighted some of the inadequacies and
  shortfalls of our current handovers.

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Plan to improve the situation

• To design a document to assist at patient
  handover which would provide consistent
  information, be easily updated, accessible to all
  nursing staff, be of benefit to staff with
  abnormal shift patterns.
• Trial the document.
• Repeat the questionnaire post trial, hopefully
  get better results.

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Trial Handover Form
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Further Work

• Develop handover document to become more user
  friendly
• Look at handover location consider bedside
  handover, confidentiality issues.
• Look at time element is allocated time for
  handover long enough?