Nursing handovers and patient safety: Findings from an umbrella review

To summarise available reviews on nursing handover (NH) and patient safety (PS), providing a set of evidence-based recommendations for clinical practice and research.

Umbrella review.

We systematically searched PubMed, CINAHL, and Cochrane Library CENTRAL databases up to October 2018.

Retrieved reviews were critically evaluated using the Checklist for Systematic Review and Research Syntheses. Then, an iterative approach and two different frameworks were adopted to categorize the findings in: (a) practice; and (b) research recommendations.

A total of 17 reviews were included: among them, 16 reported a range of recommendations for clinical practice to promote PS by reducing adverse events. For what concerns research, 16 reviews recommended specific strategies to improve and strengthen research and its quality in the field of NHs and PS.

Changing nursing handover practices to increase PS is complex: it means changing the culture, roles and behaviour of any given clinical nursing setting. To be effective, the change requires a tailored approach, time and implementation strategies including education and support. Future studies should address the flexibility required by handovers in daily practice and the multiple needs with the aim of increasing the robustness of the available evidence on NHs. These should also embrace the Complex Interventions Research Framework.

Several reviews have been performed as summaries of research and practice evidence on NHs, but no summary of the established clinical and research recommendations on NHs and PS has been provided to date. Standardized handovers supported by technological solutions, facilitating face-to-face contact between nurses, possibly alongside bedside reports, can improve PS. Well-designed longitudinal studies, on a wide scale, in different settings, based on a strong rationale and focused on measuring the association between handover and patients' safety issues are recommended.