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A validated tool to strengthen clinical handover and support safer patient care.

Effective clinical handover is fundamental to patient safety, continuity of care and high‑quality clinical practice. Yet handover processes can vary widely between teams, shifts and settings, making them difficult to evaluate and improve consistently.

The Handover Evaluation Scale (HES) is a validated, evidence‑based tool designed to assess the effectiveness of clinical handover from the perspective of clinicians, supporting organisations to monitor, evaluate and improve handover practice with confidence.

Why use the Handover Evaluation Scale?

The Handover Evaluation Scale provides a structured, reliable way to measure the quality of handover, addressing a recognised gap in standardised tools for evaluating handover practice in healthcare settings.

By using the HES, organisations can:

  • Gain clear insight into the strengths and weaknesses of current handover practices
  • Support quality assurance and accreditation requirements related to communication and patient safety
  • Identify targeted opportunities for education, training and process improvement
  • Track improvements over time using a consistent, repeatable measure

What does the scale measure?

The Handover Evaluation Scale is a self‑report questionnaire developed and tested with nurses working across multiple hospital wards within a large Australian healthcare service.

Analysis of the tool demonstrated that effective handover can be reliably assessed across three core dimensions:

1

Quality of information

Assesses whether clinical information handed over is clear, relevant, accurate and sufficient to support ongoing patient care.

2

Interaction and support

Examines the quality of communication and interaction during handover, including opportunities for discussion, clarification and professional support between staff.

3

Efficiency

Evaluates how efficiently handover is conducted, including the effective use of time without compromising the quality of information exchanged.

Strong evidence behind the scale

The Handover Evaluation Scale (HES) was developed by a team of researchers and clinicians from Deakin University and Monash Health to evaluate the effectiveness of the nursing shift-to-shift clinical handover process. It was first published in 2008, with a subsequent paper reporting Construct validity and reliability of the Handover Evaluation Scale published in 2014.

In the study involving 299 nurses across 24 hospital wards, the scale was tested using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, supported by structural equation modelling.

The results demonstrated that the HES is a valid and reliable measure of the handover process, suitable for use in healthcare organisations to evaluate and monitor handover effectiveness.

The authors concluded that the scale provides a useful and practical tool for health services and recommended its use and further development in clinical practice.

Suitable for a range of healthcare settings

Originally developed and tested in Australian hospital wards, the Handover Evaluation Scale has since been recognised as a valuable instrument for ongoing monitoring and evaluation of handover processes in clinical practice.

Since its initial release, the research team have received enquiries from healthcare professionals and students worldwide seeking permission to use the HES in their own clinical setting.

Request access

The HES is freely available, subject to the following conditions of use:

  1. You have permission to make adjustments to the survey, as necessary, to suit your local context and to reproduce your edited version of the survey.
  2. Where the HES requires translation to a language other than English, professional translation and back translation from English to the other language is recommended.
  3. You must not share the HES with any other party‚ please direct any enquiries to our web page.
  4. The following citation must be included on all copies of the HES, and all reports (e.g., thesis, published manuscript) arising from the research: O’Connell, B., Ockerby, C., & Hawkins, M. (2014). Construct validity and reliability of the Handover Evaluation Scale. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 3(3-4), 560-570. doi: 10.1111/jocn.12189

To access the HES, please click the button below to complete the request form. Upon submission of the form, you will receive a copy of the HES and a letter granting you permission for its use.

The information you provide is for our own records, helping us to identify where the HES is being used and for what purpose. Your responses are stored securely on our university server, accessible only by individuals who have been granted access to this specific data.

Request the Handover Evaluation Scale

Contact us

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References

O’Connell, B., Macdonald, K., & Kelly, C. (2008). Nursing handover: It’s time for a change. Contemporary Nurse, 30(1), 2-11. DOI: 10.5172/conu.673.30.1.2

O’Connell, B., Ockerby, C., & Hawkins, M. (2014). Construct validity and reliability of the Handover Evaluation Scale. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 23(3-4), 560-570. DOI:10.1111/jocn.12189