Ineffective Discharge Education

Improving the quality of discharge planning in acute care include addressing the lack of appropriate staff and patient education about appropriate planning for discharge (4). This includes implementing proper discharge teaching regarding signs and symptoms to seek medical attention, management and care of medical equipment, and access to community resources (4, 5). Other challenges are patients with complex comorbidities too difficult to discharge as well as lack of community supports and equipment for newly discharge patients and lack of rehabilitation and nursing home beds (4). Consequently, acute care units are pressured to vacate hospital beds in response to the growing elderly population. Hospital professionals tend to focus discharge teaching and preparation on medical areas such as diet, activity, treatments, and medications (5). Community referrals to appropriate services at the time of hospital discharge does not often happen contributing to poorer patient outcomes and re-hospitalizations

Discharge planning is used to create a plan of care for a patient who is leaving a care setting. An evaluation is done to determine the patient’s continuing care needs once they have left the care facility. When patients are send back home or to a facility that does not require full time nursing care assistance, programs need to be put into place to ensure that the patient is receiving the proper continuation of care post discharge. Proper discharge planning can decrease the chances of a hospital readmit, help in recovery, ensure medications are prescribed and given correctly, and adequately prepare family or caregivers to assume proper post discharge care. According to the Family Caregiver Alliance, “It is important, not only for patients, but family

Standard 16 of the American Nurses Association (ANA) Scope and Standards Practice, directs nurse leaders to advocate not only for patients but for all members of our healthcare community. As a discharge planner, I am in a unique position to advocate not only for patients but for caregivers as well. As part of my responsibilities, I participate in daily multi-disciplinary team rounds. The meetings take place so that all disciplines can openly discuss patient care needs. They provide the perfect opportunity for anyone to bring to light problems or concerns.

Improper patient discharge teaching can result in negative patient outcomes, increased hospital readmissions, and an overall rise in cost to healthcare facilities. As a multifaceted issue, there are several factors that may be considered in order to integrate methods to prevent readmissions and decrease unnecessary cost. Management can play a critical role in implementing guidelines for discharge teaching resulting in cost reduction and improved patient outcomes. The focus of this paper is to determine how nursing management can contribute to decreasing cost.

During clinicals, I spent some time in discharge. Though discharge is an important aspect in an outpatient center, I didn’t find it helpful. During the discharge phase, there’s less interaction with the patient’s that in pre-op and PACU. Another thing that I didn’t find helpful was the way I learned how to

Acting as a nursing leader, I would encourage the entire health care team to understand and meet a patient’s expectations. My organization embodies patient-centeredness and expects nurses, as well as all health care providers to utilize good provider-patient communication, collaborative decision-making, and coordination of services (SMMC, n.d.). Moreover, managing customer expectation does not end when the patient is discharged. The patient must take what he or she learns from their health care providers to manage their care at home. Patients must understand their follow-up care and who to contact when questions arise (AHRQ,

To contain the cost experienced by hospitals with HF readmissions, evidence based practice must be applied to avoid reduction penalties by CMS. Evidence base practice shows implementing effective outpatient measures have reduced HF readmissions by 14% to 87% (McClintock et al., 2014). These outpatient measures include case management, early follow-up care, heart failure clinics, cardiac rehabilitation, medication reconciliation regimen, mailing & telecommunications home health and targeting caregiver burden (McClintock et al., 2014). Subsequently, prior to discharge it is the responsibility of the nurse to advocate for the patient. Effective teaching and patient reinforcement of information is important to avoid readmissions of any time

There are many steps to the discharge process and while it is important to think big one should focus on starting small to achieve short-term wins. Demonstrating quick wins will help foster increased engagement. One area to gain a quick win is to partner with community physicians by arranging follow-up appointments prior to discharge. In a recent study Bradley et al. (2014) data indicates that this effort contributed to a 0.52 percentage point reduction in readmissions (Bradley et al., 2013, para. 2). Another area to introduce new practice is in increasing the number of at-risk patients who receive referrals to home health care and post-discharge phone calls. “The effect of home visits reported that with continuous post-discharge home care,

Nurses have the power to increase positive patient outcomes by implementing changes in their practice based on the evidence found in the nursing literature. Utilizing evidence-based practice (EBP) increases nurses job satisfaction, increases communication across the interdisciplinary team, enables nurses to provide their patients with high-quality care and decreases health care cost. The purpose of this paper is to describe why readmissions from nursing homes (NHs) is a nurse practice problem, nurse practice changes to reduce hospitalizations in NHs, evidence found in the nursing literature

One of the hospital initiatives is the early hospital discharge. This has been a very difficult process as it is a multidisciplinary

There is a growing crisis in healthcare; while this could be said of any number of challenges that currently face hospitals, the looming eventuality of a healthcare clinical provider shortage must be addressed (Spence Laschinger, Nosko, Wilk & Finegan, 2014). This project will focus on how hospitals can improve retention of first year nursing staff, improving nursing staff satisfaction and improving patient outcomes through the use of a residential training program and management changes that create an environment in which nurse staff feel empowered, well-adjusted to clinical realities and have increased clinical knowledge. Nurses are often the front lines care providers and as such they often interact the most with patients. It is vital

In addition to the physical demands of nursing workload, there are cognitive demands that may result in “mental overload and decreased performance” for healthcare personnel (Cite Swosu p. 132). Furthermore, the knowledge and teaching styles vary from nurse to nurse, which ultimately results in a “range of information” that patients receive, with some patients receiving “little to no information at the time of discharge” (cite 9). The combination of patient educational needs being unmet and varying quality of teaching from healthcare providers result in higher rates of readmission (Jencks et. al, 2009, as cited in 5). Thus, a patient’s hospital experience is ameliorated with adequate support and healthcare personnel taking extra care in the teaching process when involved in

In evaluating possible approaches to make the discharge process clear, easy and convenient for the patient and the staff, I looked into other

readiness. The method of educating the nurses should be selected based on evidence demonstrating that it is effective. Workshops have been shown as an effective teaching method to support staff nurse education (Galarza-Winton, Dicky, O’Leary, Lee, O’Brien, 2013; Lamiani & Furey, 2009). The reviewed studies demonstrate the influence education can have on nurses who do not fully understand the ramifications of an inadequate discharge process. Teaching nurses to be better patient educators and support a successful discharge process is an important component in improving the parental perception of discharge readiness. In a study by Weis, Piacentine, Lokken, Ancona, and Archer (2007) a correlation between higher quality of discharge teaching

Discharge instructions and planning are vital components of patient care and when properly done, ensure that patients meet the needs requires to restore or maintain their health (Reddick & Holland, 2015, p. 1).