4. What concerns you about handover?
The development of 21st century patient care has resulted in patient needs becoming increasingly complex. Such complexity may mean that there is a large amount of complex information that needs to be handed over to another nurse. Nursing students have reported that this large amount of information can prove very difficult to remember at the end of a busy shift when they are required to deliver handover.
Many nursing students have found that delivering patient handover is often a source of anxiety, which may be for a variety of reasons.
As a student nurse, you may be asked by a registered nurse if you would like to deliver patient handover for a patient whom you may have cared for during your shift. Students often report they feel unprepared for this task as sometimes the fast-paced, demanding nature of the clinical environment means that your supervisor may not have explained how to conduct such a task.
Take a look at the video of a nursing student reflecting on her initial experiences of delivering handover and discussing how she felt. After watching the video, you may find that you can relate to how she was feeling.
Transcript
I was really nervous the first time I did hand over because I remember being surrounded by all these nurses and they're brilliant. My first placement was community. So you didn't really have a lot of handovers, but when you came back to the health centre, you would talk to the other staff members. You all have like your little meeting and everybody would talk about certain people in the community that needed more support. And for me that was terrifying because I was surrounded by people with so much experience. So I definitely looked at my mentor quite a few times in the handover and said, am I doing this right? And when.. I did find that at some points that the nurse we we're handing over to, would actually talk to my mentor instead of talking to me. But I didn't take it to heart because the truth is, my mentor did know more than me. And I felt like I couldn't really say anything. I didn't not in that placement not a lot, but probably I said one patient handover and that was it. But then I went on to a cardiology unit. And my mentor actually pushed me to do my own documentation to actually have an input with all the handovers. And it wasn't until my last placement in stroke rehabilitation, that I actually had the courage so it was just my confidence I needed. It was just support from other peers, from other staff members to say, you know, you can do if we can do it, you can do it. And it was a year in the making, but now I'm fully prepared for second year.