Patient care is not a single interaction, it is a continuous journey shaped by multiple team members, transitions, and touchpoints. While every member of the dental team contributes to patient care, gaps often occur during handoffs, where roles, responsibilities, and expectations are not clearly defined. This session explores patient navigation as a shared team responsibility, with a focus on how care is transferred between providers and how these transitions impact both clinical outcomes and the patient experience. Using the analogy of a relay race, this course highlights the critical importance of each transition point in the patient journey. Just as each runner must successfully pass the baton to maintain momentum, dental professionals must ensure that information, responsibility, and patient understanding are clearly and effectively transferred at every stage of care. Participants will examine handoffs from both the team perspective (communication, clarity, and accountability) and the patient perspective (confidence, understanding, and continuity). Through discussion and real-world scenarios, the course will highlight common breakdowns in communication, such as unclear ownership, inconsistent messaging, and assumptions about what the next team member will do. Participants will bring their own experiences, including examples of both effective and ineffective handoffs, which will be explored through an interactive activity: “The Handoff: Was the Baton Secured or Dropped?” Participants will leave with practical strategies to strengthen communication, clarify roles, and support seamless transitions across the patient journey. In a relay race, dropping the baton costs the team the win. In dentistry, it costs something far more, the patient’s experience and trust.