The Importance Of Nursing Handover

Introduction Nursing Handover is important procedures and by definition it is the process of transferring information from the leaving staff to next shift staff that will be taking care of patient. Handover is vital to defend and protect the safety of our patients. The shift should provide next shift staff comprehensive handoffs to avoid harm. Each patient should have an individual handover related to his case and diagnoses. Handover should be clear and prioritised to patients care and needs. Does handover really should be given such value one would argue? One would also argue does handover needs to be developed and guidelines to be implemented. After literature review this academic paper is going to describe the guidance

The goals of handovers are multi-faceted. There are other purposes that help teaching programs, team building and supporting nurse emotionally (Currie & Watterson 2008). Every hospital has different policy to do handover and it is organized by the administrators and managers. The handover should take place and given fix time for example, during the morning time when the nurses exchange the shift. When the nursing team are doing handover should focus in listening and avoiding any distractions like phones and chatting. When the handover is conducted should be supervised by senior staff nurse and the information must be relevant to the patient. The managers should have the responsibility to insure handover between nursing staff. Jeffcott, 2009 recommended that to improve and avoid missing of knowledge related to handover it is essential to promote patient safety and improve the quality of the nursing handover. There are many different ways information can be shared and transferred between staff. For example, they can use handover sheet and cerner system in hospital as reference. In addition, when handing over any abbreviation should be explained to the staffs that are taking care. Communication effectively is a part of good handover and all team have to share the handover. In the past if a nurse is assigned to specific patient rooms she will receive an individual endorsement with the other staff that finished the duty, but now the practice changed in the hospital, the handover must take as team then everyone look over the patient related to their