Report

What area of nursing are you in? That will help us give you more information. Thanks!

when i first start to handover i ask the next nurse if they know the patient. if they looked after them the previous night then i will not have to say as much, just report any changes in the past 24hours.

if they don't know the patient or haven't cared for them for a while, i'll give reason for admit, a brief PMH, mobility, continence, mental state, anything special they need doing, if they have any unusal timed meds,

it's probably better to say slightly too much than leave something important out. try to think what is important for yourself to hear when a nurse hands over to you

This is Mr-so-and s0, a 45 year old white male who was admitted yesterday with a c/o chest pain. PMH is this.....Admitted via ED with with this DX. Current interventions. MIVF at 100, cardizem at 5, dopamine @ X. On a vent w # x.xx ETT. We did that this morning to do ABG changes that couldn't corrected with bipap/cpap. Tolerating well with current level of sedation. Soft bilateral wrists. FC to bedside w/clear yellow. Left Radial Art put in last night, Good waveform. Right TLC placed las night. All 3 lumens flush well. Wife and 2 daughters are in thew aiting room.

Good luck, just kind of give a report to where the oncoming shift knows the jist of what is going on, but also has an idea in their mind what they will see when they walk into the room. Depending on your unit, you might go on to review the chart for any new orders over the last 24 hours, review the MAR with oncoming shift, and then make walking rounds on your patients. (These last three are often an ICU thing, not sure what non-ICUs do).

Good luck!

Something that's helped me... I've made a report sheet with everything pertinent to the pt on it. And I have the report sheet set up in a manner that everything kind of "flows." When shift change comes, I just do right down the sheet. Now granted it doesn't always "flow"... but it helped me doing it that way.