Insensible losses: when the medical community forgets the family.

Care transitions are a vulnerable time for patients, and handoff improvement is a national patient safety priority. This commentary relates how a medical student's experience with handing off a patient to an intensive care unit touches on hierarchy and a missed opportunity for transparent and family-centered communication. A past AHRQ WebM&M perspective discusses problems with inpatient handovers and recommends strategies to enhance handoff quality.