Adelyons / Anchorly / Caregiver handoff notes
Caregiver handoff notes: what the next carer needs to know
A handoff is the few minutes when one carer leaves and the next arrives. For someone with dementia, what gets said in those minutes shapes the next few hours: the new carer either walks in knowing it has been a restless afternoon, or finds out the hard way.
The five things every handoff should cover
- How the day has been: calm, restless or agitated, and whether it feels steady, mixed or hard.
- What has been given: which medications, at what time. Never leave the next person guessing.
- Food, drink, toilet and sleep: a skipped lunch or a poor night often explains the evening.
- Anything that went wrong: what happened just before, what they did, what settled it.
- What helps today: the phrase, the music, the walk that worked. Be specific.
Write it down, even when you also say it
Spoken handoffs get rushed, especially when the person is unsettled or the outgoing carer is late. A written note survives the rush and is still there at 8pm when the next carer wonders whether the evening dose was given.
Keep the note short. A long narrative does not get read at the start of a shift; a few ticks and two or three lines do.
Watch the late afternoon
Many families find that agitation clusters in the late afternoon and evening, often called sundowning. If the handoff falls around then, say so: "she is usually unsettled from four; curtains closed and tea help". See sundowning in dementia: timing, triggers and what helps.
A shared log makes the handoff automatic
When everyone writes in the same log, the handoff is already written. The incoming carer opens it and sees today's entries, the doses ticked and the hard moment from an hour ago. In Anchorly a family shares the log across phones with a code, and a helper without the app can open it in a browser at anchorly.adelyons.com.
For a new paid carer or a respite service, pair the log with a one-page profile of who the person is; see what to include in a one-page profile.
Keep the family's log in Anchorly
Anchorly's shared log is the handoff note: today's log, doses given, hard moments and what helped, on every helper's phone or in a browser. No account.
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