The Nurse Handover Playbook

Description

You know your patients. You can picture them, you know what happened on your shift, and you know what you are worried about. Then handover comes, and it falls out in the wrong order, or takes too long, or the one thing that mattered gets buried under everything else. The next question freezes you, and you walk to the changing room composing the handover you should have given.

The Nurse Handover Playbook is a practical system for fixing that. It starts with why handover goes wrong and what a good one sounds like, then builds your routine step by step: a report sheet that thinks in the order you speak, a five minute preparation habit, one simple framework for shift change and SBAR for the phone call, then worked scenarios, receiving handover, bedside handover, and a 30 day plan to make it stick. No fluff. No hype. Just the reasoning a first-year nurse can follow.

What is inside (104 pages)

• One five step framework you use on every patient, every shift, so you always know what to say first, second and third.
• 20 fully worked scenarios: 8 taught step by step in the book and 12 more to practice on, from the stable patient to the one who deteriorated on your shift.
• Before and after examples that show the same messy shift said twice, so you can hear exactly what changes when handover is organized.
• A clear guide to SBAR and when to use it, with a worked escalation call to the doctor.
• The never-miss safety list: twelve things that never get left out of a handover, from allergies and code status to pending critical results.
• Two chapters on receiving handover, including the four questions to ask on every patient and what to do when the handover you are given is poor.
• Chapters on bedside handover, interruptions, rushed handovers, and how to speak clearly under pressure when English is not your first language.
• An 11 tool printable toolkit built in: a fold-out pocket card, three report sheets, an SBAR escalation card, a phrase bank, a 30 day challenge tracker and a before and after self-assessment.

Who this book is for

• New graduate nurses who know their patients but freeze when it is time to speak.
• Experienced nurses who were never taught a system and want their handovers shorter, clearer and complete.
• Internationally trained nurses handing over in English as a second language, in any country.
• Nurse educators and preceptors who want one consistent method to teach.
• Not a memorize-this-script book. Every scenario is original and invented for teaching, and the book teaches you to build your own handover, not to recite one.