Bedside handover of critically ill patients

Excerpt

Cohen and colleagues' recent viewpoint emphasised that handover is not a unilateral transfer of information and that when poorly conducted it can degrade quality of care [1]. A key feature of handover required by clinicians is the big picture, which shapes the viewpoint of the receiving party [1]. Frequently this is obscured in critically ill patients by a surfeit of physiological variables or results, and this 'noise' denigrates the handover process. Such a scenario is often observed with less experienced clinicians, who are also the most frequently studied group. Only one investigation has described handover by experienced full-time faculty physicians in critical care [2]. Unsurprisingly, handover between these individuals did not conform to widely promoted communication schemes but did commonly include questions allowing two physicians to jointly construct a picture of the patient. …