Handover in the perioperative care process

Abstract

Purpose of review: To summarize recent developments in the study of perioperative handovers, when patients are transferred between various hospital locations (emergency room, ward, operating room, recovery room, intensive care unit) and handovers between care providers (doctors and nurses) when changing shifts.

Recent findings: There has been tremendous activity in studying handovers during the last 2 years, and many potential improvements were developed, implemented and evaluated in real-life care settings. In hospitals that have electronic patient records (EPRs), a promising approach is to support the various verbal handover processes with software tools that can combine specific handover items such as to-do lists, daily goals, and concerns, with automatically extracted data from the EPRs.

Summary: There is now widespread consensus that robust, structured handover processes are critical for safe patient care. Checklists and software tools to facilitate the handover process may improve the reliability of handovers and relieve the stress on residents of handing over their patients to the incoming resident. However, there is no 'one size fits all' solution to the problems of handover. Handover improvements will need to be tailored to the specific care setting and handover type.