The OSSIE Guide to Clinical Handover Improvement has been developed to assist
clinician-leaders and managers to implement solutions and tools for improving clinical handover practices. The Guide outlines the five phases of OSSIE, which equate to a framework for change management. OSSIE stands for:
O = Organisation leadership
S = Simple solution development
S = Stakeholder engagement
I = Implementation
E = Evaluation and maintenance
The OSSIE Guide to Clinical Handover Improvement (PDF 1456 KB) is available for download.
The first edition has been developed as a Consultation Edition and focuses on hospital clinical handover. Comments on the Consultation Edition will be invited from 28 May 2009 – 28 August 2009 and will inform a second edition, to be released in late 2009. The second edition will also incorporate new chapters on handover in specialty areas of health such as interhospital transfer and maternity care.
Feedback on the whole document will be welcomed, however readers and responding organisations are encouraged to provide submissions structured according to the chapters of the OSSIE Guide. Please send us your valued feedback either by email to mail@safetyandquality.gov.au or through provision of hard copy documents in the post to:
Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care
c/o Improving the OSSIE Guide
GPO Box 5480
Sydney NSW 2001
National Clinical Handover Initiative Pilot Projects
Fourteen pilot projects from across Australia took part in the National Clinical Handover Initiative pilot project (2007-2009) to develop tools and solutions to improve handover processes. Each pilot developed transferable improvement tools and solutions for handover that can be localised to different contexts Learnings from the pilot program informed the development of the OSSIE Guide to Clinical Handover Improvement.
Topics that formed part of the National Clinical Handover Initiative Pilot Program included: shift-to-shift handover, inter-hospital transfers, team communication, transfers between aged care facilities and hospitals, bedside handover and whiteboard communication, mental health to community practitioner handover, electronic handover guidelines, handover in maternity care and reflexive video observation.
These studies, along with the tools and solutions, will be successively released over the first half of 2009
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