ABSTRACT
This research originated from the desire on the part of a sister in a hospital coronary care unit (CCU) – Sister Rachel Sagar – to change the handover system when nurses change shifts. She had been dissatisfied with the current, traditional system for a while and wanted to introduce bedside handovers. While this is not a particularly new idea in nursing practice, the format that she was proposing, involving the patients in the process rather than just leaving them as passive onlookers, was new in her ‘high-tech’, short-stay hospital environment. This approach has been more frequently found in longer-stay, rehabilitation-type wards where the emphasis is on nursing care more than medical intervention.
