Contemporary Evidence for Bedside Handover

Case scenarios
Contents
1. What is the contemporary evidence to support bedside handover?.............................................3
1

2. Referring to the Action 6.7 in Communicating for Safety NSQHS Standard - what key actions
should happen in the bedside handover and why?...........................................................................4
3. Briefly explain how you will approach the RN in this situation?................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6
2

1. What is the contemporary evidence to support bedside handover?
In the health care facility, the responsibility for patient's care is transferred among care
providers on daily basis. It happens in active as well as interruptive environments which are
typical of those in health care currently. Communicating the information of patient to the next
provider of care can be referred as handover or handoff or end of shift report or report. There are
three primary things which are transferred at the time of handover including responsibility,
authority and information (Martin, Jones, & Wolfe, (2017). Effective information transfer is very
important it has been depicting that communication breakdown between the care providers is the
key contributing element in sentinel events. It has been found in a review that around 3000
sentinel events depicted that a breakdown in communication happened 65 - 70 % of the time
(Bressan, Cadorin, Stevanin, & Palese, (2019). The poor communication handovers have
outcomes into adverse events, redundancies and delays in treatment which impact effectiveness
and efficiencies, low satisfaction of patient and health care providers and more admission.
As per the Australian council for safety and quality in healthcare's clinical handover report,
clinical handover of patients is the transfer of professional accountability and responsibility for
some or all care aspects for patient to another individual on temporary or permanent basis. As
per the provided scenario, the hand over takes place at nursing station to a graduate nurse on
surgical ward and the handover is given for patients in the area. There are four patients among
which I know one of the patient and the remaining 3 are new to me. A comprehensive handover
has received by me of all the pertinent medical as well as nursing information. The handover is
provided properly with adequate amount of information, accountability and responsibility which
will impact positively on the patients (Flanigan, (2016). This help me in providing the diagnosis,
treatment and care in an appropriate way. An evidence based handover communication will
support improving the safety of patient by execution of care delivery systems which are
effectively structure the communication of handover. The nursing handover practices is highly
variable which lead to inconsistencies in accuracy and content of handover information.
However, transferring the responsibility for care of patient to another care provider maximize the
probabilities of an error happening, particularly if important information is not communicated
properly. Any incomplete, unclear, or inaccurate transfer of information upsurges the risks of
possibly severe errors while patient care (Jensen, (2020).
3