• Medical education and training

Safe, efficient handovers are essential in the contemporary health service. During a 24 h inpatient stay, the care of a patient is transferred at least twice, between day and night teams. In shift based emergency departments, intensive and high dependency units, the number of handovers is increased. Deficient handovers may have serious consequences, such as delays in diagnosis, increases in the likelihood of adverse events, and greater health care costs.1

Dynamic medical systems require simple and efficient ways to organise medical information that is verbally transmitted during a handover. Current models used at medical handovers use the storytelling tradition as a background. Information is presented in heavily summarised impressions of reviewed patients with a beginning, middle, and end. Consequently, some of the less important details and administrative information are relayed first. Summarised histories follow, with important management and prognostic details coming last.