The Approaches and Attitudes of Nurses on Clinical Handover.

Background: A patient handover is a critical process in health care services in which nurses are typically engaged several times in each working day. Aim: The purpose of this study was to determine the approaches and attitudes of nurses regarding clinical handover in Turkey. Method: This study, planned as descriptive and cross sectional, was conducted between April and July 2013 in seven institutions located in a city of Turkey. The sample group consisted of a total of 480 nurses. A personal information form and a questionnaire on clinical handover were used in this study. Results: In this study, the positive aspects of clinical handover mostly indicated by the nurses were as follows; “Simplifies the follow-up of patient information”, “Simplifies the acquisition of information about the patient and the disease” and “Gives an opportunity to get information that I did not know or did not understand” (respectively 80.2%, 74.2%, 67.7%). The negative aspects of clinical handover mostly specified by the nurses were as follows; “Clinical handover takes too much time” (24.4%) and “increases work load” (14.4%). Conclusions: It was determined that nurses indicated that while clinical handover had advantages such as the acquisition of information about the patient and the disease and the follow-up of patient information, it had disadvantages such as taking too much time and increasing the work load. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]