Role of Nurses in Proper Clinical Handover of Patients Essay

This essay delves into the crucial role of nurses in ensuring effective clinical handover of patients, emphasizing the importance of clear communication and comprehensive documentation. It highlights the significance of the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (ACSQHC) standards, particularly Standard 6, in promoting patient safety through well-structured handovers. The essay discusses key principles such as active patient, nurse, and clinician participation, preparation and organization of handovers, and the constituents of clinical handover. It outlines the nurse's responsibilities, including maintaining patient confidentiality, providing detailed information, and engaging with patients and caregivers. The essay also addresses evaluation, reporting adverse effects, and the use of tools and methodologies to improve the handover process. Ultimately, the essay underscores how proper clinical handover by nursing staff can significantly reduce communication gaps, enhance patient safety, and improve care planning within hospitals. The essay uses credible sources to support the claims.

Running head: ROLE OF NURSES IN PROPER CLINICAL HANDOVER OF PATIENTS
Role of nurses in proper clinical handover of patients
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1ROLE OF NURSES IN PROPER CLINICAL HANDOVER OF PATIENTS
2. The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (ACSQHC) has
formed the ten standards on the National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) that aims
in protecting the patients from any harm and effectively improve the quality provision of health
service. They deliver effective methods in order to ensure that minimum safety and quality
standards are met with an improved mechanism to understand the developmental goals (Phillips,
et al., 2014). Among the10 standards, the standard 6 is about clinical handover that aims in
ensuring timely, well framed and relevant handover that sets the clinical setting and handover
standards. Organising the clinical handover effectively can minimise the communication errors
in between the health professionals and thus increase the safety and care of the patients
(Hesselink, et al., 2012). Problems in clinical communication are one of the important risk
factors in about 70% hospitals that usually rise at the transient period when the patient is shifted
between units, clinicians and teams (Tappenden, et al., 2013). Inaccurate clinical handover exert
adverse affect resulting in delayed diagnosis and treatment, skipped or duplicated tests resulting
to wrong treatment with administering wrong medication to the patients (Eggins, S., Slade, & D.,
2012). The other discrepancies are communication problem due to variation in gender, ethnicity
and hierarchy. Thus, the achievement of an effective clinical handover is met based on three
criterions such as the implementation of an effective handover system by the health organizers,
the health service should have well documented and well framed processes of clinical handover
in place and lastly organizations should establish techniques to incorporate patients and nurses in
handover processes (Tolk, et al., 2015). The policies and procedures should be abided efficiently
in order to help the care services in assisting the patient with respect (Thomas, et al., 2013). In
this following essay we will discuss the nursing role related to clinical handover of by proper
communication and documentation of the patients.

2ROLE OF NURSES IN PROPER CLINICAL HANDOVER OF PATIENTS
Values underlying clinical handover. The first principle is that the clinical handover
should actively include the participation of the patient, the nurses and the clinicians (Drach‐
Zahavy, et al., 2015). The clinicians should listen to the information provided by the patients and
the nurses in order to understand the situation. Apart from the clinicians, it is important for the
patients and nursing department to know the current progress with required treatments and care
planning. This principle of active involvement thus can reduce the risk of experiencing adverse
event by the patients (Barello, et al., 2015).
Preparation and organisation of handovers. The clinical handover needs to be prepared
before the time of handover. The nursing staffs should make the handover at a given time and
place. All the relevant documents and the notes about the progress should be regularly updated
and should be available during the handover time. Along with verbal handover, the nursing staff
should also provide documentation in the form of handover sheets. A designated nurse should
punctually share all the relevant communication as handover surrounds the patients’ safety and
employees protected and paid time. All the environmental issues such as safety and health issues
that can affect the shift should be informed to the incoming nursing team. Thus, to avoid the
miscommunication the handover should always contain the points such as patients requiring
immediate treatment, with high acuity, deteriorating, extra safety measures for patients with
infections, discharging or transferring patients and allocating the staffs and nurses (Drews & A.,
2013). The handover should also include accountability transfer and responsibility that assists in
accurate communication of critical information among the clinicians (Eggins, S., Slade, & D.,
2012).

3ROLE OF NURSES IN PROPER CLINICAL HANDOVER OF PATIENTS
Constituents of clinical handover. The nursing staff should process the handover in a
structured and well documented manner in order to ensure that every participant knows the
information, the handover purpose and also the documentation that has to be shared (Kerr, et al.,
2014). The information is shared within the clinicians of one discipline, to other discipline, to the
wards within the heath service during shift change, from one to another ward, during transferring
the patient to other facility, on patient discharge or whenever the condition warrants. In order to
ensure that relevant information are shared by the nursing staffs, tools based structured handover
are used that encourages the patient assessment, improves communication thereby saving time
both for assessment and clinicians. To help the clinicians remember the information for
handover, many acronyms are used (Holly, C., Poletick, & B., 2014).
Methodologies. Whenever possible the interacting and clarification should be conducted
in front apart from verbal handover comprising of updated information of patient. The supportive
tools can lower the risk of skipping information, can improvise the information retention, and
reduces repetition and handover length (Bost, et al., 2012). It is important that the information
provided is fully clear to the person receiving the handover by the clinicians though the patients
are stable (Dawson, S., L., Grantham, & H., 2013).
Role of nurse providing the handover. The nursing staff should maintain the confidential
information and the privacy of the patient in the handover. While escorting a patient by non-
staff, a verbal handover should be provided to the allocated person receiving the patient in order
assumes the responsibility and accountability (Johnson, et al., 2012). All the transfer details and
discharge details should be well discussed both with patient and nurse. While handing the
patients to clinicians, they should be informed about the patients’ present status and admission
time. The details of patients’ identity and stability should be assessed properly in order to prepare

4ROLE OF NURSES IN PROPER CLINICAL HANDOVER OF PATIENTS
the handover during transferring or at discharge time (Pham, et al., 2012). Documentation should
be updated comprising of preparing the handover forms and progress notes. The forms should
include the date of admission and diagnosis, any events at the time of admission, complete
discharge summary, any kind of risk with preventive strategies and referrals. During receiving
the handover, nurse in charge should communicate to the patient and care giver. While
communicating with clinicians, the nurse should be completely aware of the admission time and
other relevant details regarding the patient and clarify if unsure about anything (Manias, et al.,
2016). The nurse should perform an overall assessment and record the findings regarding
progress along with complete documentation of medication and fluid charts. Any doubts arising
should be immediately clarified with clinician before taking the patient’s charge. Proper
availability of all the patient’s related documents should be (Dawson, S., L., Grantham, & H.,
2013).
Engaging with patients and nurses. The nurses should educate the requirements and role
of clinical handover to patients and caregiver. This attitude can bring out a concerned issue and
can be effective in treating the patient (Caligtan, et al., 2012). The need of exchanging the
information is to provide further information that was not available with clinicians. The patients
and caregiver should get acquainted with the current status followed by treatment and care
planning. Both the patient and caregiver should point out any query with the team of health care.
Excluding English, information should be provided in other languages. The staff should ensure
that patient and caregiver both remain updated about the courses of treatment along with
discharge information (Smeulers, et al., 2012).
Evaluation and reporting adverse affects. The nursing staff should participate in auditing the
clinical records and evaluate the documentation to improve the practices (Towers & L., 2013).

5ROLE OF NURSES IN PROPER CLINICAL HANDOVER OF PATIENTS
Nurse in charge, allocated medical officer should be aware of any poor or unavailability of
clinical handover and should be entered in clinical record thereby reporting to the risk
management system (Markar, H., O'Sullivan, & G., 2012). These events should also be informed
to patients and caregiver thus implementing the organization’s disclosure. The trends based
information can then be utilized to improve the system, protocols, policy and equipments along
with improving training activities and education (Pham, et al., 2012).
Thus, by implementing a proper clinical handover by the nursing staff in the hospital can
effectively reduce the communication gap among the clinicians and patients and contributes to
increase the patients safety and better care planning in the hospital.

6ROLE OF NURSES IN PROPER CLINICAL HANDOVER OF PATIENTS
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