A patient handover is a critical process in health care services in which nurses are typically engaged several times in each working day. The purpose of this study was to determine the approaches and attitudes of nurses regarding clinical handover in Turkey. This study, planned as descriptive and cross sectional, was conducted between April and July 2013 in seven institutions located in a city of Turkey. The sample group consisted of a total of 480 nurses. A personal information form and a questionnaire on clinical handover were used in this study. In this study, the positive aspects of clinical handover mostly indicated by the nurses were as follows; “Simplifies the follow-up of patient information”, “Simplifies the acquisition of information about the patient and the disease” and “Gives an opportunity to get information that I did not know or did not understand” (respectively 80.2%, 74.2%, 67.7%). The negative aspects of clinical handover mostly specified by the nurses were as follows; “Clinical handover takes too much time” (24.4%) and “increases work load” (14.4%). It was determined that nurses indicated that while clinical handover had advantages such as the acquisition of information about the patient and the disease and the follow-up of patient information, it had disadvantages such as taking too much time and increasing the work load.

Key Words: Bedside handover, clinical handover, communication, nursing handover, nurse