Patient Safety Zone

Following work in NHS Lothian, NES colleagues have worked with Dr Ailsa Howie, Clinical Lead for Handover Education, NHS Education Scotland to develop resources suitable for use by local teams across NHS Scotland to improve effective handovers.

Patient information communicated during handover is inadequate for the task. Communication failure leads to uncertainty in decisions in patient care inefficient, suboptimal care and patient harm. Handover is defined as - "the transfer of professional responsibility and accountability for some or all aspects of the care of a patient or group of patients, to another person or professional group on a temporary or permanent basis".

For further information contact ailsa.howie@nhslothian.scot.nhs.uk or mark.johnston@nes.scot.nhs.uk.

New resources for training on effective handover have been created specifically for Covid-19 patients. These focus on escalation of care, palliative decisions and hospital trasnfers. Scenarios, videos and exemplars are available and can be found here.