Care rarely stays with one person. A sibling covers the weekend, a home aide comes in on weekdays, a partner takes over while you travel for work. Every time care changes hands, there’s a moment where what one person knows has to reach the next. That moment is where the evening pill gets doubled, the follow-up call gets forgotten, and the new cough goes unmentioned until it’s worse.
A handover is just a short, structured note that crosses that gap. Below is a checklist you can reuse every time, a worked example, and a few ways to make the habit stick.
Why a handover beats “all good?”
The usual handover is a hallway conversation: “All good?” “Yep, all good.” Both people mean it, and most of the important detail stays behind. Memory-based handovers fail in predictable ways. The person leaving is tired, and the person arriving doesn’t know what to ask.
A written handover with a fixed order fixes three things at once:
- Nothing gets skipped, because the same headings come up every time, including the ones that are usually empty.
- Facts replace reassurance. “Ate half her dinner” is more useful than “ate okay.”
- People who weren’t there can read it. Siblings in other cities, the aide on Monday, whoever has the next appointment. The National Institute on Aging suggests keeping everyone involved informed with a shared caregiving notebook that’s reviewed and updated regularly.
The handover checklist
Copy this into wherever your family keeps notes. Go through every heading each time, and write “nothing new” rather than skipping one. An empty heading tells the next person you checked.
The handover checklist
- How they are. Mood, eating, drinking, sleep, getting around. Write what you saw, not what you think it means: “slept 10 PM to 6 AM, up once.”
- Anything new or different. A new pain, a fall or near-fall, confusion, a change in appetite, a rash.
- Medications. Doses given and skipped since the last handover, with reasons for any skipped. Any changes from the doctor. Anything running low.
- What happened. Visits, phone calls, deliveries, letters that arrived.
- Coming up. Appointments in the next few days and who’s driving.
- Still open. Every unfinished task, with an owner and a date. If it has no owner, say so.
- Keep an eye on. Anything to watch, and who to call if it changes.
- Where things are. Keys, the visit folder, the spare glasses, the new prescription.
- Confirm it was read. Ask the next person to reply once they have, so you know it landed.
A worked example
Here’s the checklist filled in after a weekend shift. It took about five minutes to write.
A few things make this one work. The “no owner yet” on the smoke alarm is honest and invites someone to pick it up. The knee is mentioned in two places, as something new and as something to watch, with a clear threshold for acting on it. And nothing in it is a diagnosis: Joel reports what he saw and points to the right person.
Making it stick
The best handover format is the one your family actually uses. Some habits that help it last:
- Same time, same place. Write it at the end of every shift or visit, and post it where everyone already looks.
- Short beats complete. If it takes more than five or ten minutes, it won’t happen on a hard day. Keep each heading to a line or two.
- Always ask for confirmation. A reply means the next person has read it, not just that you sent it.
- Keep the old ones. A run of handovers shows patterns no single one does: the knee that’s mentioned three weekends in a row, the appetite that slowly drops. That history is useful at the next doctor’s appointment.
- Adjust the headings. If your parent’s care involves something specific, like wound care, a feeding schedule or a blood sugar log, add a heading for it.
