Objective To investigate the effectiveness of teaching morning handover in clinical teaching of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in general hospitals. Methods A retrospective study was conducted at the Institute of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine, West China Hospital of Sichuan University from April 2023 to March 2024, involving a total of 220 participants including interns, postgraduates/standardized training students, and residents/refresher students. The control group consisted of trainees who studied from April to September 2023, while the observation group included those who studied from October 2023 to March 2024. Teaching morning handover was added to the clinical morning report for the observation group, while the control group only conducted the conventional clinical morning report. Due to the differences in basic knowledge and clinical positioning, trainees except interns were classified as clinical residents. A questionnaire survey including satisfaction of teaching content, teaching methods, teaching ability and teaching management and graduation assessment including total score, theoretical assessment score, clinical process score and participation in teaching activities were compared between the two groups. Results Compared with those of the interns (n=57) and clinical residents (n=49) in the control group respectively, there was no statistically significant difference in satisfaction of teaching content, teaching methods or teaching ability of the interns (n=78) and clinical residents (n=36) in the observation group (P>0.05); however, teaching management satisfaction was significantly improved (interns P=0.002, clinical residents P=0.022). Both the interns and clinical residents in the observation group had a significantly higher total score as well as theoretical assessment score and increased participation in teaching activities (P values for interns were <0.001, 0.001, and <0.001, respectively, and for clinical residents were <0.001, 0.013, and <0.001, respectively). However, there was no significant difference observed between groups regarding clinical process score (P>0.05). Conclusion Teaching morning handover is helpful in improving the quality of TCM teaching in general hospitals and is an effective model for clinical teaching of TCM.