The influence caused by hospital discharge planning in the duration of the patient stay

Abstract

Introduction

Nowadays, at the hospitals, the biomedical is the main criteria, which lacks the multidisciplinary approach defining clinical discharge date, at hospital internment services and, many times, ignores the learning and knowledge acquiring processes by the patient and its family. This study raises the question about the positive effects achieved by a proper, integrated planning by the entire clinical staff onto the patients/families.

Objectives

To determine the existence of hospital patient's planning factors that relate to the number of days that one remains hospitalized.

Materials and methods

It was created an observation grid in order to register the data collected concerning the 100 patients clinical processes, admitted at the CHLN orthopaedics department. This is a quantitative, descriptive-correlational type study.

Results

Overall the objectives were achieved, since one concluded that the number of internment days is directly influenced by the presence or absence of certain hospital discharge planning factors, such as: surgery organization and scheduling; type of diagnosis and proper surgery; communication amongst multidisciplinary staff members as well as individual contributions; the moment when discharge preparation starts; involvement of patient and its family in the discharge process as well as the information they receive.

Conclusions

One can corroborate the need to implement an integrated hospital discharge plan, beginning at admission time and involving multidisciplinary team, patient and his family. This will enable the decrease of internment days and related costs as well as minimize negative effects involving an internment.