Clinical audit: Effective handover of critically ill patients in intensive care units between the shifts by the medical and nursing officers.

Hand over is the process of transferring clinical data between health care professionals. Interruption to the continuity of care can take place during handover and result in poor patient outcome. The aim of this audit was to find out whether the handover practice between shifts in the Intensive care unit (ICU) is safe and effective. Data was collected by a self-administered questionnaire which was distributed among nursing and medical officers who were selected by convenience sampling of ICU’s at the National Hospital of Sri Lanka (NHSL). It was identified that there are multiple deficiencies in the current hand over practice and need introduction of standardized hand over technique to our ICU’s.