The Trauma Handover with Andrew Pearce

In this session I am speaking with Andrew Pearce on the concept of the trauma handover. We examine the definition of the handover, the commonly expected barriers to effective handover, and the recall of handover information. We will also examine where the handover occurs, standards and recommendations, tools and templates, how we can measure effectiveness, and finally whether it works in practice. We will also dig into some of the empirical literature to examine some of the evidence behind the handover.

Andrew Pearce is an Emergency Physician and pre-hospital retrieval medicine specialist. He is currently the Clinical Director and a Medical Retrieval Consultant coordinator at MedSTAR Emergency Medical Retrieval Service based in Adelaide, Australia. In the episode we examine:

1. Definition of the clinical handover.

2. Commonly expected barriers to information handover.

3. Recall of information and some of the errors in recall.

4. Empirical findings on handover from the literature.

5. Where the handover occurs and bias attached to handover information.

6. Current standards & recommendations (Standard 6, ACSQHC)

7. Templates and Tools used and advocated.

8. Measuring effectiveness/quality assurance of handover.

9. Summary from Andrew.

Some of the empirical papers and standards mentioned in this episode can be found here:

Clinical handover in the trauma setting: a qualitative study of paramedics and trauma team members

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20702445/

Expectations differ between senders and receivers of patients in transition - Joint commission centre for Transforming Healthcare 2017

https://www.jointcommission.org/-/media/tjc/documents/resources/patient-safety-topics/sentinel-event/sea_58_hand_off_comms_9_6_17_final_(1).pdf?db=web&hash=5642D63C1A5017BD214701514DA00139&hash=5642D63C1A5017BD214701514DA00139

Clinical handovers between prehospital and hospital staff: literature review

https://emj.bmj.com/content/32/7/577.short

Australian Commission on safety and quality in healthcare: Standard 6: Clinical Handover

https://www.safetyandquality.gov.au/sites/default/files/migrated/Standard6_Oct_2012_WEB.pdf

My thanks to Andrew for an engaging and insightful interview.