Handover: passing a patient between nurses

A dialysis unit runs in shifts, and most avoidable harm happens at the point where responsibility moves from one nurse to another. The console makes handover a recorded clinical act rather than a conversation at the door.

Role: nurse and clinical lead.

The shape of a handover

Handover follows I-PASS, the structure used for clinical handover in hospitals generally: who the patient is and how sick they are, what has happened, what the situation is now, what the receiving nurse should watch for and do, and a read-back to confirm the message actually landed.

Preparing one

Start the handover from the patient or the session. The summary is filled in for you from the live session and the medicines given, so you are editing an accurate draft rather than writing from memory at the end of a long shift. Add what the draft cannot know: the things you are worried about, and what you want the next nurse to do.

Receiving one

Handovers waiting for you appear in your handover inbox and in the notification bell. Open one, read it, and accept it. Accepting is the read-back step, and it is what actually transfers the patient: the receiving nurse becomes the primary nurse on the chair at that moment, so the floor board and the record agree about who is responsible.

A handover you raised in error can be cancelled before it is accepted.

Why it is not optional

An accepted handover is a timestamped record of who was responsible for a patient and when responsibility changed, signed by both people involved. If a question is ever asked about a session, this is the answer.

See also Nursing for the session itself.