Authors

  1. Chan, Maggie Mee Kie DHSc, RN
  2. Chan, Claudia Kor Yee MSc, RN
  3. Pang, Michelle Tsz Ha MSc, RN
  4. Tsang, Vivien Wai Yin MSc, RN

Article Content

Although students are taught how to use ISBAR (Identify, Situation, Background, Assessment, and Recommendation) for clinical handover, they have expressed difficulties in verbalizing their thinking and explaining their actions in an organized way. Clinical handover requires nurses to have good clinical reasoning skills to be accurate and to enable team communication. Therefore, we conducted a simulation-based workshop aimed to enhance students' clinical handover skills by strengthening their clinical reasoning. We designed scenarios, incorporating the clinical reasoning cycle with ISBAR, to teach clinical handover. Students were required to assess and identify the patient's problems, perform accurate interventions, and hand over patient issues to their teacher. In addition, we designed a cue card in ISBAR format to help students use clinical reasoning to interpret a patient's situation and to present and reflect on what they had learned (see Supplemental Digital Content, available at: http://links.lww.com/NE/B177). Reflective practice is important in clinical reasoning to help students develop an understanding of actions and bridge the knowledge-practice gap. Therefore, we scheduled a 5-minute reflection time for students to synthesize their information before the clinical handover. Student reported that this teaching strategy enhanced their clinical reasoning and clinical handover. However, students reported feeling stressed reflecting in such a short period of time and needed more time to process what they had learned and revise their handover contents. They suggested that a 15- to 20-minute reflection session would have been more appropriate.