How to Take Responsibility for a Patient

Introduction

Taking responsibility for a patient assigns you as their primary contact within your team. This helps colleagues know who is managing the patient's care and enables proper care coordination during handovers and shift changes.

Before You Start

• You must be a member of at least one team that the patient belongs to
• You must not exceed your maximum patient responsibility limit
• The patient must have a team in common with you

Steps

Taking Responsibility for an Individual Patient

1. Navigate to the patient you want to take responsibility for (either through search, your team's patient list, or the organization patient view)
2. Click on the patient's name to open their patient profile
3. Click the kebab menu (⋮) in the top right corner of the screen
4. Select Take Responsibility from the menu (identified by a download icon)
5. The action completes immediately without confirmation - the patient list will refresh and you'll now see yourself listed as the responsible clinician

Taking Responsibility for All Patients in a Team

1. From the sidebar, select My Teams
2. Click on the team whose patients you want to take responsibility for
3. Click the team functions dropdown menu in the top navigation bar
4. Select Take responsibility for all patients (identified by an import icon)
5. A dialog box appears with the title "Take Responsibility All Patients in Team"
6. Review the confirmation message: "Please confirm that you wish to take responsibility for all patients in this team"
7. Click the Take Responsibility button to confirm (or Cancel to abort)
8. The button will show a loading state while processing
9. Upon success, the dialog closes and the team data refreshes automatically

Force Taking Another User's Patients (Team Owners)

1. Navigate to your team and select the Members tab
2. Find the team member whose patients you need to take over
3. Click the kebab menu (⋮) on that member's row
4. Select Take all users patients (identified by a list icon)
5. A dialog box appears with the title "Force take Users Patients"
6. Review the confirmation message and click Take Responsibility to confirm
7. All of that user's patients in the team will be transferred to you

Tips

• Individual vs. Bulk: Use individual patient responsibility when taking over specific cases. Use the team-level option when starting a shift or taking over all care responsibilities.
• Patient Limits: If you encounter an error about exceeding patient limits, you may need to hand over some existing patients before taking responsibility for new ones.
• Verification Required: You can only force-take patients from verified team members (those who have verified their mobile or email).
• Cannot Self-Transfer: The force-take option is not available for your own patients - use the standard handover process instead.
• Immediate Refresh: After taking responsibility, patient lists update automatically so you can immediately see your new assignments.

Common Error Messages

• "Cannot take responsibility for patients in a team you are not a member of": You must join the team first before taking responsibility for its patients
• "The maximum number of patients that you can take responsibility for is: [limit]": You've reached your patient capacity - hand over some patients before taking on more
• "There are too many patients in this team for you to take responsibility": The team has more patients than your individual limit allows
• "Only an organisation user can force take patients": Force-take is restricted to certain user roles within your organization

Related Features

• How to Hand Over a Patient: Transfer responsibility to a colleague when going off duty
• How to Create a Referral: Transfer a patient to a different team
• How to Manage Your Patient List: View and organize patients you're responsible for