Strategies for Implementing Consumer Involvement in Nursing Handover on Acute Mental Health In-Patient Units

Consumer participation in the process of care delivery is crucial to recovery-oriented care. Nursing handover is an important process during the delivery of care on acute in-patient units. Despite the importance of involving consumers in this process, it remains a relatively new concept within mental health. This is due to the complexities involved in the provision of care within the mental health setting. There is a paucity of research on how to successfully implement consumer involvement in nursing handover within mental health settings even though this practice has been occurring within generalist settings for some time now. This paper reports on the findings on the implementation of consumer involvement on an acute in-patient unit. The views of consumers and mental health nurses about the process have already being reported. This current paper describes how a new handover system was implemented using a modified version of the model for successful change to bedside handover by McMurray et al. which was based on Lewin’s force-field model of unfreezing, moving and refreezing and Kotter’s model of change. The key elements of successful implementation are discussed. There is a need to carefully design and implement consumer involvement in nursing handover within acute in-patient units. There are lessons to be learnt in the process adopted and described in this paper.