The Handbook: an end to 'I wish I had known that before I started'

The importance of an effective handover between clinicians is vital, particularly for junior doctors when commencing a new clinical rotation. When junior doctors commence a new rotation there is often a significant amount of new information and tasks that they must learn, whilst also maintaining a high level of care for patients. However, very little information is formally passed from the outgoing junior doctor to the incoming junior doctor when changing rotations, resulting in a gap in knowledge and information having to be relearned by each junior doctor for each ward. Through a junior doctor led service improvement initiative we created an intranet-based, updateable, easily accessible, and secure resource to assist junior doctors during this transition period. Our project was not only beneficial to junior doctors when starting on a new rotation but also helped them understand their role within the ward environment and become more efficient in their clinical work. The project is an example of a sustainable service improvement project implemented with no cost that due to its format and low maintenance, could be easily adapted on a wider scale in other hospitals or Trusts.