A handoff is not a telegram: an understanding of the patient is co-constructed.

Link to article at PubMed

A handoff is not a telegram: an understanding of the patient is co-constructed.

Crit Care. 2012 Feb 8;16(1):303

Authors: Cohen MD, Hilligoss B, Kajdacsy-Balla Amaral AC

Abstract
ABSTRACT: Hospital handoffs are believed to be a key locus of communication breakdown that can endanger patient safety and undermine quality of care. Substantial new efforts to better understand handoffs and to improve handoff practices are under way. Many such efforts appear to be seriously hampered, however, by an underlying presumption that the essential function of a handoff is one-way information transmission. Here, we examine social science literature that supports a richer framing of handoff conversations, one that characterizes them as co-constructions of an understanding of the patient.

PMID: 22316097 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

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