Clinical handover in a bilingual setting: interpretative phenomenological analysis to exploring translanguaging practices for effective communication among hospital staff

OBJECTIVE: To explore the linguistic features of translanguaging in bilingual handover practices and elicit the views of hospital staff on factors that hinder or facilitate effective handover practice in a bilingual environment. METHODS: 78 hospital staff were recruited from hospital wards and emergency departments of two Hong Kong hospitals. They were interviewed to determine their perceptions of their handover communication in a bilingual context, and their responses were subjected to interpretative phenomenological analysis. RESULTS: Based on the staff interviews, three dimensions with potential applications to effective clinical handover are identified. A revised Identify, Situation, Background, Assessment and Recommendation protocol accounting for linguistic pluralism (i.e., the translanguaging process) is suggested to underpin the future research agenda around effective clinical communication in a bilingual context. CONCLUSIONS: Research on handover communication in multilingual contexts is limited. This study outlines linguistic pluralism at the handover stage and details the complexity of handover communication for staff in a bilingual context. It urges for more research with a specific focus on identifying avoidable linguistic issues that emerge from the clinical context and developing a suitable protocol to standardise staff’s translanguaging processes to ensure a safe and efficient handover process in a bilingual environment.