This Element highlights essential aspects of safe, robust and transparent communication of patients between neurosurgeons.

One of the biggest challenges as a neurosurgical trainee is to master the handover. This requires developing an organisational efficiency to concisely relay relevant patient information to a suitably qualified person to execute a given task. A trainee can work extremely hard during an on call, making suitable decisions, implementing previous plans to perfection and covering slack in a team. But if the presentation of this work is unclear then it undoes a lot of that hard work and generates an impression of a trainee being disorganised. Success in a handover requires an understanding of whom you are talking to, what you are saying, how you are saying it and if the way you are communicating gains and maintains interest. Above all a handover should ensure the smooth continuity of care of a patient.