I found this template site on Microsoft.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/CT101043361033.aspx?av=ZWD000

None of them really fit, but it gives you an idea what you can do with
WORD. You can be very creative in WORD. Just decide what you want to
include on the shift report, have someone with WORD or EXCEL experience
make up the form, copy a bunch of them and you're set.

It would be nice if we had a form, as sometimes info from shift to shift
is lacking. I'll bring it up to my team leader. It probably wouldn't be
necessary on a daily basis - just if there were complicated situations
pending.

Judy Dilworth, M.T. (ASCP)
Microbiology

We have a handover log, but I can't help but feel it's pretty much a waste
of time as rarely there's anything out of the ordinary to say.
However legislation says we must have one, so we have three columns -
"date", "message" and "read by". The message is "business as usual" 99.9% of
the time, and it's just more paper to be stored.

Telling you to start documenting something just before an inspection is bad
management ...

JCAHO has asked everyone -- nurses, techs, etc -- to develop good methods of
"handing-off" important information to the next responsible party.  It
doesn't have to be hand-written, although most places choose to do so.
Unprofessional and sloppy are minor considerations ... it has to be
universally used and effective in improving communication between shifts.

We use our Pending Log as a communication device between shifts.  We print
them off by area (not by workstation) about a half-hour before the end of
the shift, and write down everything the next operator needs to know,
including the status of outstanding work, insturment issues, how awful the
workload has been, etc.  We both sign it, and the log gets filed for two
months.  When tracing a problem backwards, we're able to see exactly where
the oversight occurred and use the information to troubleshoot and improve
our process.