nursing practice and management to enhance patient care.

The importance of having a healthcare system that provides quality, affordable and accessible care cannot be underestimated. In the Australian context, various healthcare reforms and policies have been enacted over the decades to improve the quality of care provided to the people. However, despite the efforts by the government to enhance the delivery of quality care, it remains pertinent to healthcare practitioners especially the nurses to understand the various problems facing the healthcare system and take the appropriate measure to address them. This essay, therefore, focusses on patient handover, its implications, and how the latter can be appropriately addressed in nursing practice and management to enhance patient care. Patient handovers are common in healthcare facilities and entails the transfer of some or all aspects of professional healthcare responsibility and accountability to another professional or caregiver on a permanent or temporary basis (Klim et al., 2013). The handover process is therefore very critical and has the potentiality of positively or negatively impacting the health outcomes of a patient. If proper strategies are not adopted to ensure continuity of appropriate care after the handover, a wide range of care adversities could be experienced by the patient.