Improving Medical Handover: An SHO-Led Approach to Implementing A Formalized Handover System

Handover is a high-risk exercise. As the number of doctors in hospitals vary between shifts, continuity of care must be secured from many professionals down to a few. Literature has repeatedly shown that handover time is when the greatest number of medical errors occur [1]. Tasks may be inefficiently handover over, mis-represented or forgotten entirely. We have shared perspectives from a quality improvement (QI) project undertaken at the William Harvey Hospital, Kent, United Kingdom towards ensuring safe and smooth handover of medical tasks between shifts at the acute medical department in this hospital.

COMBACTE LAB-Net: building a European laboratory network for clinical trials on anti-infectives

LAB-Net, the laboratory network of COMBACTE, has established itself as an indispensable network for clinical trials in infectious diseases that plays a crucial part across 30 clinical studies not only within, but also outside the COMBACTE consortium. Since its official launch in January 2013, LAB-Net has expanded more than threefold and in Q4 2020 it encompasses 841 labs across 41 countries in Europe. In addition, LAB-Net has crossed the European borders and collaborates with more than 300 laboratories spread across the globe. The tight collaboration with partners within COMBACTE and beyond contributed tremendously to the growth of LAB-Net over the years. A sustainable infrastructure beyond COMBACTE-NET is needed to ensure the smooth handover and continuity of the achievements made by the project.

Key Commercial Point Sentinel During “Order Transfer” from Client and Sales for Execution in Manufacturing Industries

The Moment Purchase order received in project-driven manufacturing industries and the initial review among key stake holders need to be conducted to understand the technical and commercial requirements of a project. The sales team involved in booking the order and the representatives of clients certainly attend the review meeting known as “Order transfer” to kickstart the project. Usually, the project life cycle needs to be broken down in to 7-9 important phases and the Project Manager/ the Executive sponsor must lead further meetings at the end of every phases before the next. Phase gate checklists are the key tools used during different stages of projects from Initiation till closing. As per PMBOK (Project management body of knowledge), Phase gate checklists are mandatory to decide on further progress for any project at different stages. The research specifically emphasizes the key commercial points to be finalized frozen before initiating the order acceptance process followed by project execution. There are chances of overlooking or misjudging important terms and conditions at initial stages, which may lead to complications in the course of project completion, and, sometimes, hinder going ahead with the project itself. By introducing checklists during the order transfer from customer to sales or sales to factory will avoid such mishaps and will be helpful for a smooth handover to operations. Currently many checklists are in practice and tailored to conduct the phase gates for different firms. However, they need to be modified in such a way that they will be universally utilized by all types of manufacturing industries. In this article, we deal with the modified checklist for manufacturing industries which will be helpful in avoiding any missing key commercial information during the order transfer. Keywords: Checklist, Order Transfer, Phase Gates.