A qualitative study of shift handover practice and function from a socio‐technical perspective

Kerr, Micky

doi:10.1046/j.1365-2648.2002.02066.x

Cited by 180 publications

(169 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Studies conducted on patient handover acknowledge that little attention or research has been directed to this procedure in hospitals. 1,5,8,11,18,20 This study highlighted the need for process change, consistent with the work by Roughton and Severs 7 and McKenna. 4 The study provided a qualitative and quantitative analysis of a hospital' s handover process.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 79%

“…A study conducted by Kerr showed handover in a paediatric hospital to be a very complex communication event, with a range of socially and technologically distributed practices and multiple functions. 1 Kerr 1 and Lardner 8 both identified handover in their studies as partitioned into three phases: pre-handover, an inter-shift meeting, and post-handover. Typically, handover occurs across varying levels of experience, knowledge, and roles.…”

Section: Handover In Hospitalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The goal of handover is the accurate and reliable communication of task-specific patient information across shift changes, thereby ensuring a relatively safe and effective continuous work environment. 1 The motivation behind this research is to gain a better understanding of how handover operates and to identify recommendations to improve the process. …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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A description of handover processes in an Australian public hospital

Bomba¹,

Prakash²

2005

Aust. Health Review

128

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Handover of patient care has been an ongoing problem within the health care sector. The process remains highly variable and there is a threat to patient safety. Despite the general belief that handover transitions in patient care have become routine, not enough attention or research has been directed at improving this period of care. For this reason there is a need to provide an analysis of the communication processes during handover. A study was conducted of the handover process among doctors during shift changes within a hospital setting. The results suggested a need for process change. Results revealed a handover process which was unstructured, informal and error prone, with the majority of doctors noting that there was no standard or formal procedure for handover. The research found that the majority of hospital doctors recognised the potential benefits MAINTAINING CONTINUITY BETWEEN WORK SHIFTS is important in all continuous process operations, especially in the health care sector. It is particularly crucial when one considers the continuity of care a hospitalised patient requires, which extends past a single doctor or team. A shift handover mechanism is needed to allow personnel changes with minimum disruption to the functioning of a ward or unit in a 24-hour work context. The goal of handover is the accurate and reliable communication of task-specific patient information across shift changes, thereby ensuring a relatively safe and effective continuous work environment. 1 The motivation behind this research is to gain a better understanding of how handover operates and to identify recommendations to improve the process. Handover in hospitalsIn most hospitals, clinical records are still stored on paper. 2 Medical staff keep track of current patients' conditions using hand-written charts. These charts are then either left at the patient' s bed or at the service bench at each ward. The work of the Institute of Medicine has pointed out the inefficiencies in paper-based systems, such as What is known about the topic? The nature of health care delivery regularly requires the transfer of responsibility for patients from one health care professional to another. While there have been concerns raised about the effectiveness of the handover process there are relatively few medical studies describing or promoting safe transition methods. What does this paper add?This paper reports on the results of a study of medical handover at one NSW hospital that found the handover process to be informal, unstructured and a possible contributing factor to errors in patient care. The study comprised a questionnaire completed by a range of medical staff, interviews and direct observation of the handover process by the authors. What are the implications for practitioners?Hospital managers and clinician leaders should review and look for ways to improve the quality and safety of the handover process. Specifically, the authors suggest the need for standard handover procedures to be developed throughout the hospital. Australian ...

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: Handover In Hospitalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A description of handover processes in an Australian public hospital

Bomba¹,

Prakash²

2005

Aust. Health Review

128

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“…The amount of information handed over may also depend on whether or not an oncoming member of staff has previously cared for the patient (Kerr 2002). The 'partial' nature of handovers has been highlighted; shift handovers have been found to be given at high speed, using abbreviations and jargon that assume knowledge on the part of the listener (Ekman and Segesten 1995;Payne et al 2000).…”

Section: Previous Studies Of Handovermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similarly, Strange (1996) describes how, while waiting for the handover to begin, staff who have had days off will enquire whether the ward has been busy or which patients have been transferred. Kerr (2002) describes the updating of documents in preparation for the handover (the 'pre-handover' phase) and the collecting of information from documents afterwards (the 'posthandover' phase).…”

Section: Previous Studies Of Handovermentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond handover: supporting awareness for continuous coverage

et al. 2010

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Hospitals are required to operate as a continuous system because patient care cannot be temporarily suspended and handover is seen as a key method for enabling this. This paper reports a study of handover in a medical admissions unit. We draw on the notion of awareness as conceptualised within the Computer Supported Cooperative Work literature to explore the role played by a variety of cognitive artifacts in supporting continuous coverage. While such awareness is typically characterised as being 'effortless', our study reveals that maintaining awareness in a context such as the medical admissions unit is effortful due to invisible work. We suggest that the notion of awareness is beneficial for exploring the practices of continuous coverage because it moves attention away from the moment of handover, instead encouraging consideration of the variety of practices through which clinicians display their work to, and monitor the work of, colleagues on different shifts. We argue that efforts to support continuous coverage should focus on improving awareness by increasing the visibility of information.

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