Clinical Handover

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Clinical handovers between prehospital and hospital staff: literature review http://emj.bmj.com/content/early/2014/09/01/emermed-2013-203165.short A common ethical issue within the paramedic discipline that can have a positive or negative result with patient care and safety is clinical handovers. Emerging research of clinical handovers between paramedics and emergency department staff has shown that effective patient handover has been linked to not only improving patient care and safety, but it has been shown to also improve decision making and documentation.

On a day to day basis paramedics face a multitude of challenges when obtaining patient information or receiving a patient handover themselves when outside of the hospital setting. These clinical and social patient findings occur in various locations that may be calm or chaotic and are relayed through various routes. Having excellent communication is a key component to effectively relay patient information over to receiving staff. This requires the paramedic to not only be self-confident and concise but to be able to assert themselves and speak loudly. In contrast the receiving staff …show more content…

This issue also tends to arise with negative interprofessional relationships

The standardisation of handovers with the use of mnemonics has been greatly useful in developing consistency and a basis for providing essential information which has in turn resulted in decreased questioning from emergency department staff. On the contrary it was founded that using mnemonics did not improve the ability to recall information compared to handovers that had no structure.

Poor communication was evident where health care professionals were not listening, mistrust founded upon relational problems and misunderstandings between personnel. Apart from evident poor communication there are also challenges such as noise, chaos and interruptions that

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