Table 2

Coding scheme (adapted from ref. 20)

Coding category	Definition
Content
Patient presentation
Patient identifiers	Statements that convey patient identifiers such as name, date of birth or hospital number.
Clinical history	The patient's past medical problems/conditions that are pertinent to the current diagnosis or clinical impression.
Social history	The patient's social circumstances and psychological needs describing, for example, housing situation and existing care arrangements, family or friends accompanying, etc.
Symptom	Descriptions and explanations that provide information about symptoms of concern.
Procedure	Statements about pertinent laboratory data, pertinent test results, medications and evaluation that already been performed to address the patient's current condition.
Assessment
Treatment	Statements about future medical procedures to be taken to address the patient's current problem.
Clinical impression	Identification of the current clinical impression, naming the problem or reasons for the problem.
Prognosis	Probabilistic statement about patient's future condition based on completed or proposed treatments.
Outcome	Definite utterances about the result of the handover, for example, accept, not accept, wait and see.
Transfer of responsibility	Statements about what was being asked of the recipient of the handover.
Professional environment
Logistic processes	Descriptive or evaluative talk about logistics or procedural issues in emergency department, hospital, or healthcare system.
Courtesies	Statements such as thank you, greeting and closing remarks, etc., that provide a context of professional courtesy.
Language form
Information seeking
Closed question	An utterance that is designed to solicit specific information.
Open question	An utterance that is designed to solicit information in a manner that affords the respondent the opportunity to elaborate.
Clarifying question/request	An utterance that is a question designed to seek clarification of another's immediately preceding utterance. May take the form of a request.
Information giving
Description	Utterances that provide description about the patient and the patient's past or present condition and circumstances.
Explanation	Utterances that state the facts and make an inference about the patient.
Rationale	A justification is offered to account for any medical procedures, tests, medications or recommendations concerning the patient. The intent is to justify why an action has been taken or will be taken in the future.
Directive	Advisements, orders or recommendations that inform patient evaluation, treatment and disposition.
Context talk	Talk about contextual issues in clinical environment such as logistics and procedures.
Social amenities	Utterances in which physicians exchange courtesies and talk that tells the sender that the receiver is paying attention.
Decision	Utterances in which the physician accepts or does not accept the patient. May be directly stated or implied.
Information verifying
Read-back	Statements that paraphrase or restate what the other has said.