Family members’ perceptions of the nursing bedside handover

Aims and objectives. To explore families’ perceptions of shift‐to‐shift bedside handover. Background. The potential role families can play in bedside handover is unknown. Understanding family members’ perceptions can provide a foundation for nurses to tailor their bedside handover to family members’ perceptions, encouraging their involvement and potentially improving patient care. Design. Qualitative study, using case study methodology. Methods. The study was conducted with eight family members in one rehabilitation ward in Queensland, Australia, in 2009. Data included observations of bedside handover, field notes and in‐depth interviews. Thematic analysis of data was conducted to identify unique and common themes indicative of family perceptions. Results. Three major themes emerged. The first, understanding the situation, consisted of three subthemes: feeling informed, understanding the patient’s condition and understanding patient’s treatment. The second theme was interacting with nursing staff, with five subthemes, including sharing information, clarifying information, assisting in care, asking questions and interpreting for the patient. The final subtheme was finding value, which contained five subthemes: feeling at ease, feeling included, valuing individualisation, preparing for the future and maintaining patient privacy. Conclusions. Bedside handover provides an opportunity to involve family members in patient care and promote family‐centred care core concepts. Family members value the chance to participate and can ultimately improve the accuracy of handover communication. Relevance to clinical practice. Bedside handover is beneficial for nurses, patients and family members and embodies patient and family‐centred care. Managers should consider its implementation in hospitals, developing strategies such as standard operating protocols for a more family inclusive approach to communication. Nurses may require further training to best undertake bedside handover and involve family members in care. The study suggests expansion of research into this important area of family‐centred care.     

Bedside nursing handover: Patients' opinions

Within the context of contemporary nursing practice, bedside handover has been advocated as a potentially more suitable mode for achieving patient‐centred care. Given that patients can play an important role in the process, better understanding of patients' perspectives of bedside handover could be a critical determinate for successful implementation of the practice. Using a phenomenological approach, this study attempted to explore patients' perceptions of bedside nursing handover. Four key themes emerged from the patient interviews: ‘a more effective and personalised approach’, ‘being empowered and contributing to error minimization’, ‘privacy, confidentiality and sensitive topics’, and ‘training need and avoidance of using technical jargon’. Patients welcome bedside handover as they can be empowered through participation in the process. Nevertheless, attention is needed to ensure that adequate training is provided to nurses and to minimize the use of technical jargon so that handover is delivered with a professional and consistent approach.     

Foucault at the bedside: a critical analysis of empowering a healthy lifestyle

Since quite a few years, philosophy is heading towards the bedside of the patient: the practice of philosophy has stepped out of its ivory tower, it seems, to deal with empirical or practical questions. Apart from the advantages, we should keep in mind the importance of a critical analysis of medical or clinical practice as such. If ethics partakes the clinical stage, it runs the risk only to discuss the how question and to forget the more fundamental what or why questions: what are we doing exactly and why is it good for? Starting from the principle of the empowerment of the patient, we will demonstrate how the discourse on empowerment in health care seems to forget a profound reflection upon this principle as such. By rehearsing some basics from the governmentality theory of Michel Foucault and the actualization of it by Nicolas Rose, we will argue how philosophical investigation in medical‐ethical evolutions such as empowerment of the patient is still needed to understand what is really going on in today's clinical practice.