Improving the quality of handover in a liaison psychiatry team

Handover is a high risk point for errors in clinical care, in many cases leading to adverse events or near misses. The timely transfer of accurate and useful information between professionals is vital to ensure quality and safety, and to ensure the transfer of accountability for care. In this project standards were developed for quality handover between doctors in a liaison psychiatry department. The aim of these were to ensure adequate identification of patients, clear communication of tasks to be completed and relevant risk issues, as well as a guide to the priority of jobs. We measured compliance with these standards for all patients documented in the handover book during three week periods in 2013, 2014 (following delivery of education and guidance on handover to all doctors), and finally in 2015 after implementation of a proforma for handover. Handover documentation prior to the implementation of standards was of poor quality with significant absences of information. Key information to identify patients was frequently absent, for example hospital number was only recorded in 1% of cases. Only 81% of entries included the reason for the patient's referral, and 27% made no mention of the outstanding tasks for completion. Despite guidance and education of all doctors regarding the standards, there was no consistent improvement in compliance. It was particularly concerning that risk issues were only mentioned in 18% of cases, even when assessed immediately after education was given. Following introduction of the proforma compliance increased with overall completeness of handover improving from 40% to 71%. Without guidelines handover between shifts is of a poor quality, and often lacks key information to allow colleagues to identify patients and prioritise need. Education of those performing these handovers did not produce any benefits, either immediately following its delivery or in longer term follow up. The implementation of a template to aid clinicians in recording this data did produce improvements and received positive feedback from doctors.