Learner handover in surgical and procedural training: continuity of coaching or reputational contamination? A narrative review.

PURPOSE: Learner handover is the transfer of learner-related information between supervisors, rotations or educational phases. This narrative review examines learner handover in surgical and procedural training, including surgery, interventional cardiology, interventional radiology and gastrointestinal endoscopy, where information about prior performance may influence entrustment, supervision, case allocation and technical opportunity.

RESULTS

Learner handover has been proposed as a way to mitigate the discontinuity inherent in rotational training and to enable earlier, more targeted coaching. However, empirical work on prior performance information shows that assessors can be influenced by what they are told before observing a learner, with both assimilation and contrast effects described. Learners report that handover can feel opaque, anxiety-provoking and reputationally risky when they do not know what is shared, by whom or for what purpose. In procedural specialties these concerns are amplified because reputational information may alter access to scarce cases, thresholds for hands-on participation and the level of supervision granted during invasive tasks.

CONCLUSION

Learner handover should neither be adopted uncritically nor rejected outright. Surgical and procedural programmes should replace informal reputational exchange with structured developmental handover that is behaviourally specific, recent, proportionate, learner-centred, time-limited and linked to explicit coaching actions. The central task is to preserve continuity of coaching while preventing reputational contamination.