To ensure consistent information, accurate and concise communication must be present during patient care transitions or hand off. Care transitions, or “hand-offs”, occur multiple times each day in a hospital and at every change of care location. This does not include off unit reports for lunch breaks, special procedures lab, physical or occupational therapy, or general radiology reports on the patient given by the unit nurse.

Standardization work has been initiated by the HL7 Clinical Document Architecture group, nursing process and ISO Reference Terminology Model. European eHealth has called for a summary which crosses borders and provides a timely transfer. IHE could solve the issue by creating an interoperable nursing eHealth summary which is possible to use nationally and internationally

The purpose of  the eNursing Summary Profile is to create an interoperable summary of nursing related data that communicates the ongoing patient care needs to another care provider. The data elements were determined by an international survey of 589 nurses. Data element information for the selected Use Cases are documented in a summary table for ease of comparison. 
