Letters
Health services administration
Volume 187 - Issue 10

A national survey of medical morning handover report in Australian hospitals

Authors:  Matthew J Fassett, Terry J Hannan, Iain K Robertson, Steven J Bollipo and Robert G Fassett

Med J Aust 2007; 187 (10): 595-596. || doi: 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2007.tb01430.x
Published online: 19 November 2007
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In reply: Our national survey was specifically confined to medical morning handover report, one of many forms of clinical handover.1 The clinical governance area may have only recently recognised the importance of clinical handover, but it has been a topical issue for many years in the clinical arena, particularly in the United States.2 While Australia may be leading the way in international collaborations, our survey suggests that this is not translating into clinical practice. Rather than commissions and councils providing tools and guidelines to carry out clinical handover, clinical leaders need to participate and conduct clinical handover themselves at the local level. From our previous experience with morning report, we provided simple tips on how to implement clinical handover at the local level,3 and these have been incorporated into Australian Medical Association guidelines.4

Information technology can be employed to help with the clinical handover process. However, when using the all-inclusive definition of clinical handover suggested by Loh, this task is complex, as research has shown that information management needs vary significantly between different clinical environments and would require multiple end-user-defined outputs from a standardised data repository.5,6

Clinical handover needs to be implemented from the bottom up (by clinicians) rather than from the top down (by commissions).

Authors

  • Matthew J Fassett1
  • Terry J Hannan1
  • Iain K Robertson2
  • Steven J Bollipo1
  • Robert G Fassett1
  • 1. Department of Medicine, Launceston General Hospital, University of Tasmania, Launceston, TAS.
  • 2. Clifford Craig Medical Research Trust and School of Human Life Sciences, University of Tasmania, Launceston, TAS.

Correspondence: rob.fassett@dhhs.tas.gov.au

References

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