Handover In Nursing Essay

The Health Executive Report “A vision for change” strongly emphasises the need for clients’ involvement in all aspects of their care (DoH 2006). The inter-shift nursing handover plays crucial role in continuity of clients’ care, however, regardless of its importance and department of health recommendations (DoH), current handover practice depriving service users in this regard. Therefore, this paragraph will explore the notion of possibility of clients’ participation in inter-shift handover practices. Attempts of locating research specific to psychiatric inpatient settings for this sub-theme were unsuccessful. Nevertheless, academics contemplated change of customary (verbal) inter-shift handover across numerous inpatient settings. These include:

While Anderson and Mangino (2006) and Kassean and Jagoo (2005) studies investigated the theory that patient involvement in handover process would promote patient centred care through increased interaction between nurses and service users. The results proved that change to bedside handover in fact not only promoted patient-centred care, but improved process quality, benefited organisation financially and increased patients, nurses and physician satisfaction (Anderson and Mangino 2006, Kassean and Jagoo 2005). On the other hand, the issue of breaching of confidentiality during bedside handover, highlighted by same researchers could be particularly alarming for psychiatric inpatient setting. Since mental health nursing handover should contain such sensitive clients’ specific information as: psychological and social needs, early warning signs, risks and risk management plans (NICE 2011), the issue of confidentiality should be vigilantly considered. Therefore, while bedside handover promotes clients involvement in their care, confidentiality shortcomings of this type of handover reduces its suitability in highly complex inpatient psychiatric