Authors: Vitale Elsa, Massaro Michele, Matteucci Alessia, Della Pietà Cosimo, Gualano Attilio, Germini Francesco.
Handover is a part of the activities that are learned in the course of clinical practice, from the observation of expert colleagues, first as students and then as new hires, becoming a teaching tool for communicating nursing care data.
The present literature of review aimed to verify the effectiveness of the methods of transmission of information of nursing interest, published in the literature, to guarantee the continuity of care of the patient, recognizing its limits and the advantages in their application.
The strategy used to identify the studies included consulting the following electronic databases: PubMed, Cinahl, Scopus, Google Scholar.
A total of 27 studies, of which 14 were included in the bibliographic review and 13 were considered excluded.
From the systemic analysis of the articles, it is highlighted that there is still no evidence available to support the effectiveness of one style of handover over another.
However, it is of fundamental importance to systematically apply the guiding principles for a safe handover; use a “face to face” system; make use of information technology to support the communication process and implement the co-participation of the hospitalized person.
To improve clinical practice, the various methods of handover must be influenced by each other, thus limiting the negative characteristics of the same if taken individually.
It also emerged that most systems are characterized by a greater demand for working time, entailing the risk of losing information, not involving the patient, the fulcrum of the nursing care process.
Bedside handover is the modality with the lowest risk of error among those analyzed as it reduces the time required for the transfer of information, analyzes the patient holistically, is the transparency and trust of the patients towards the health professionals is guaranteed and the clinical risk is reduced; all fundamental elements to allow a safe care process.
However, the bedside handover is not a perfect system; in fact, a contrasting element is the patient’s privacy issue, which is omitted when the nurse transfers the information to the patient’s bed. Therefore, it emerges the need to carry out further studies that analyze each type of handover, evaluating the benefits and limits and comparing them with an objective system that allows to determine which is the best method in order to standardize a precise method and adopt it in each department.
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