Resource: communicating effectively in bedside nursing handover

Chapter 6 described the challenges nurses faced at the research site when implementing the mandated policy of bedside handovers. In response to our research findings, and with the strong support of the local health department, we developed a twohour training module ‘Better Bedside Handovers’, and a train-the-trainer package. At time of writing we have delivered this training to more than 300 nurses and nurse-managers. The training is described in full in Slade et al. (in preparation). In this chapter we summarize the training module design and present the communication protocols and tools that we developed.