Background: Hospital discharge is a time of transition in the patient’s care, involving communication between the various hospital units, with community health services and with patients and their carer. When communication and information sharing are poor (fragmented, delayed, incomplete), this leads to an increase in adverse outcomes, negative patient experiences and delayed discharge. Knowledge sharing can be improved to support safety and quality in discharge processes and planning within complex healthcare systems. Patient experience is one of three pillars of quality in healthcare. In Ireland, the National Inpatient Experience Survey (NIES) introduced in 2018 has consistently highlighted ‘discharge or transfer’ as the lowest rated stage of inpatient care in Irish hospitals, including GUH.
Aim: The overall aim of this programme of research is, with key stakeholders (hospital staff and patients/carers,) to co-design strategies and implement solutions to strengthen communications during patient discharge from Galway University Hospitals (GUH). Objectives: To: capture a range of key stakeholder experiences (patients and staff) of current discharge processes with a specific focus on communication; unpack key stakeholder experiences to enable the co-design of appropriate, feasible and sustainable solutions; co design strategies to implement, monitor and evaluate quality communication during discharge processes and, to implement and evaluate the code signed solutions. Methods: Experience-Based Co-Design (EBCD), a participatory design method primarily used as a healthcare quality improvement tool with a purposive sample of up to 15 each of hospital staff and patients/carers.
What the work is expected to establish: A model of ‘how to’ work with patients/carers and staff to implement changes for quality improvement that can be scaled out to hospitals nationally for discharge and other care pathways. Timely, accessible information on medication and treatment plans at discharge leading to fewer readmissions within 30 days post discharge and fewer medication and treatment plan errors.
