Introduction
A handover in CAREFUL transfers responsibility for a patient, along with all outstanding actions, from one clinician to another. This is essential for shift changes, going off duty, or transferring care to a colleague.
Understanding Handovers
Handover transfers responsibility and actions to another user
Handover is a key concept in CAREFUL, designed to transfer responsibility for patients quickly and seamlessly between team members. In some countries, this is called "handoff" or "sign-out" – CAREFUL uses both terms depending on your organization's location.
A handover requires acceptance
A successful handover involves three steps:
- The sending user selects one or more patients
- The handover is sent to another user
- The receiving user accepts the handover
The handover can be rejected by the receiving user or cancelled by the sending user – in either case, the handover is not completed and responsibility remains with the original user.
Three ways to select patients for handover
You can handover patients in three ways:
- Single patient: From an individual patient's profile
- All my patients in a team: From a specific team view
- All my patients: From the My Patients view across all teams
Important Rules
You can send multiple handovers, but not for the same patient
A patient can only be handed over from one user to one other user at a time. If you try to handover the same patient twice, you'll receive an error message.
If you're a member of multiple teams, you can send separate handover requests for patients in different teams to different colleagues.
You can receive multiple handovers, including for the same patient
When you accept a handover, you can still receive additional handover requests from other users for the same patient. This consolidates actions from multiple team members.
For example: during a shift change, several day-shift team members can each send handovers for the same patient to the night-shift clinician. When all are accepted, the night-shift clinician receives all actions from all day-shift team members for that patient.
Learning More About Handovers
Watch the interactive tour
CAREFUL includes a guided tour that explains handovers with video demonstrations. To access it:
- Click your profile name in the top navigation bar
- Select Show Quick Guide Tour from the dropdown menu
- Click through the tour steps until you reach "Handing over patients"
- Watch the embedded video demonstration
The tour appears automatically on your first login, but you can replay it anytime from your profile menu.
Access the Support Centre
For comprehensive handover documentation:
- From the sidebar, click Help (marked with a question mark icon)
- This opens the CAREFUL Support Centre in a new browser tab
- Navigate to the Handovers section for detailed guides
Tips
- Set yourself On Duty using the toggle in the top navigation to receive handover requests
- When you're Off Duty, colleagues won't be able to send you handover requests
- Check the Handovers page from the sidebar to view received and sent handover requests
- Handovers include all outstanding actions for the patient – review these carefully before accepting