What is clinical handover?
Clinical handover is:
"...is an explicit transfer of information supporting the transfer of clinical accountability and responsibility between healthcare professionals to enable continuity of care for the patient”.
Failure in clinical handover is a major source of preventable patient harm.
As a routine process, clinical handover can be improved by the use of tools and techniques that standardise the process, while leaving room for situational variation.
The standardised structure for all clinical handovers is iSoBAR2:
- Identify
- Situation
- Observations
- Background
- Agree to a plan
- Readback
The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (external site) has a number of iSoBAR tools available on their website.
Clinical handover policy
The objective of the Clinical Handover Policy (MP 0095/18) is to ensure clinical handover is conducted in a similarly structured manner across WA Health Service Providers. The requirements of this Policy are supported by the National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards (2nd ed.). The Clinical Handover Policy is currently under review.
The following may support the implementation of the Policy:
More information
Patient Safety and Clinical Quality
Email: eopp@health.wa.gov.au
Last reviewed: 15-03-2022
Produced by
Patient Safety and Clinical Quality