Designing Learning Outcomes for Handover Teaching of Medical Students using Group Concept Mapping

Purpose To develop, by consultation with an expert group, agreed learning outcomes for the teaching of handover to medical students using Group Concept Mapping. MethodIn 2013, the authors used Group Concept Mapping, a structured mixed methods approach, applying both quantitative and qualitative measures to identify an expert group’s common understanding about the learning outcomes for training medical students in handover.Results45 experts contributed to the brainstorming session. 22 of the 45 (48%) from 4 European countries completed the pruning, sorting and rating phases. 68% had more than 10 years professional experience, 45% had more than 5 years experience in curriculum development. The experts identified 10 themes with which to select learning outcomes and operationally define them to form a basis for a curriculum on handover training. The themes entitled ‘Being able to perform handover accurately’ and ‘Demonstrate proficiency in handover in workplace’ were rated as most important. ‘Demonstrate proficiency in handover in simulation’ and ‘Engage with colleagues, patients and carers’ were rated most difficult to achieve. ConclusionsThe study identified expert consensus for designing learning outcomes for handover training for medical students. Those outcomes considered most important were among those considered most difficult to achieve. There is an urgent need to address the preparation of newly qualified doctors to be proficient in handover at the point of graduation; otherwise this is a latent error within healthcare systems. This is a first step in this process. The next are the design of the curriculum, its implementation, followed by evaluation.