Clinical handover of patients for specialized centre care from pre-hospital to in-hospital care - a narrative review
Abstract
Introduction: During the last few years the role of non-technical skills including communication and cognitive aids is becoming more important and also influences pre-hospital care. This narrative review aims to summarize published articles on the information handover from pre-hospital to in-hospital care which is dominantly used in critically ill patients who need centre care (acute coronary syndromes, post resuscitation etc.).
Literature search strategy: We undertook a literature search in the Scopus, Cinahl, Ovid and Medline databases, with inclusion and exclusion criteria, to find all articles about clinical handover from pre-hospital to in-hospital care. We found 27 articles which match the inclusion criteria.
Results: We identified 12 different acronyms for information handover. The results were grouped into four main themes - the acronym used for handover, the shape of handover, complications during handover and training in handover.
Conclusion: The shape of handover varies but all these articles support the need for structured handover which might improve the safety of provided care by reducing the information loss. A few authors even encourage having a national guideline or standard for both givers and receivers of the handover.
None of the articles tested the pre-notification phase of information handover which is also important in the cases of pre-hospital cardiac arrests or patients with acute coronary syndrome.