eMJA: Patient care handovers: what will it take to ensure quality and safety during times of transition?

Supplement

Patient care handovers: what will it take to ensure quality and safety during times of transition?

Julie K Johnson and Paul Barach

MJA 2009; 190 (11): S110-S112

1. Seek to understand handover communication as a complex adaptive process

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2. Recognise the effect of culture as a key enabler for change and improvement

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3. Develop tools to make information readily accessible and transparent

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4. Apply principles of human factors to clinical design

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5. Focus on training and sustaining

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6. Identify the leadership required to improve handovers

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Questions to help guide local implementation of new handover strategies and to measure the impact of the changes

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Competing interests

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Author details

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References

It has been suggested that you can’t improve what you don’t measure. It has also been suggested that if you don’t know where you are going, any map will do. The articles in this supplement demonstrate that researchers in Australia are mapping approaches to measuring and improving the complex arena of clinical handover. Furthermore, their collective efforts at trying to make sense of the chaotic interlude of handover are at the cutting edge of clinical research.

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