Importance and Role of Nursing Handover in Patient Care

Running head: NURSING ASSIGNMENT 1
Nursing Assignment
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation

NURSING ASSIGNMENT 2
Introduction
Nursing handover is a system by which the responsibility for ongoing and immediate care
is shifted amidst health practitioners (Redley, Bucknall, Evans & Botti, 2016). It is an elaborate
part of improved communication in medical science, which is identified as a condition where
excellent communication is required to make sure the safety of the patient is guaranteed
(McKechnie, 2015). Nursing handover is practiced every day in a large number of ways in all
clinical environments. The most important contributing factor which has been recognized in
severe adverse events is the breakdown in the transfer of information or communication, and it is
a major avoidable cause of patient harm. This essay focuses on nursing handover by discussing
its importance and role in nursing.
Nursing Handover
Nursing handover is crucial as it helps in the broadening and development of
communication skills. This is because a well-led nursing handover session offers an active
environment for nursing education. Breakdowns in communication are the leading causes of
therapeutic errors (Garrett, 2016). Therefore, during the nursing handovers health professions
will develop their communication skills hence averting those errors (Slade, Murray, Pun &
Eggins, 2019). In a bedside handoff, clinical nurses utilize the Situation, Background,
Assessment and Recommendation (SBAR) approach as part of an electronic health records
system which involves the patient and focuses on the health of the patient in supporting patient-
centered care (Khuan & Juni, 2017).
The handover information is an intervention which gives a chance for the incoming and
the outgoing practitioners to communicate effectively with the patient and the family (Principe,
2018). The outgoing practitioner does an introduction of the incoming practitioner to the patient.

NURSING ASSIGNMENT 3
Next, the incoming professional updates the patient and the family on any concerns regarding
their stay in the healthcare facility. Also, he updates reports on the patient care board, which acts
as a communication tool between health practitioners and patients (Principe, 2018). This process
promotes the safety of the patient and develops trust by allowing patients and families to
participate actively throughout clinical handover, which improves the communication skills
between the incoming and outgoing nurses together with the patient.
To take an example of a bedside handover, it encourages direct participation with patients
and their families. Through the exchange of nursing reports in the presence of health
practitioners and patients can guarantee correct identification of patients by recognizing the
patient’s concerns and responding to queries from the incoming peers (Slade et al., 2019).
Through this process, the communication skills of health practitioners will be improved.
Moreover, adequate performance of nursing handoffs should be a priority of clinical education to
foster practical communication skills and ensuring the safety of the patient. In that case, the
opportunities of nursing students to be involved in handoff should not be limited to avoid the
prevention of communication skills development (Palese et al., 2019).
Moreover, clinical handover provides satisfaction at the job (Johnson, Sanchez & Zheng,
2016). Delivering the best possible quality of care is highly rewarding and is necessary for a
health practitioner’s sense of job satisfaction. Also, it increases service satisfaction since each
health professional attending a patient can start from where the last practitioner left off. Here, the
patient's professionalism and perception are reaffirmed and improved. With the presence of the
patient at the time of nursing handoff, it prompts the outgoing shift nurse to transfer relevant
patient's report and also reminds the incoming shift nurse to elucidate and ask queries affiliated
with the patient along with their plan of care (Roslan & Lim, 2017).