Published online Jul 9, 2022. doi: 10.5492/wjccm.v11.i4.255
Peer-review started: March 1, 2022
First decision: April 13, 2022
Revised: May 6, 2022
Accepted: June 18, 2022
Article in press: June 18, 2022
Published online: July 9, 2022
Patients leaving the intensive care unit (ICU) often experience gaps in care due to deficiencies in discharge communication, leaving them vulnerable to increased stress, adverse events, readmission to ICU, and death. To facilitate discharge communication, written summaries have been implemented to provide patients and their families with information on medications, activity and diet restrictions, follow-up appointments, symptoms to expect, and who to call if there are questions. While written discharge summaries for patients and their families are utilized frequently in surgical, rehabilitation, and pediatric settings, few have been utilized in ICU settings.
To develop an ICU specific patient-oriented discharge summary tool (PODS-ICU), and pilot test the tool to determine acceptability and feasibility.
Patient-partners (i.e., individuals with lived experience as an ICU patient or family member of an ICU patient), ICU clinicians (i.e., physicians, nurses), and researchers met to discuss ICU patients’ specific informational needs and design the PODS-ICU through several cycles of discussion and iterative revisions. Research team nurses piloted the PODS-ICU with patient and family participants in two ICUs in Calgary, Canada. Follow-up surveys on the PODS-ICU and its impact on discharge were administered to patients, family participants, and ICU nurses.
Most participants felt that their discharge from the ICU was good or better (n = 13; 87.0%), and some (n = 9; 60.0%) participants reported a good understanding of why the patient was in ICU. Most participants (n = 12; 80.0%) reported that they understood ICU events and impacts on the patient’s health. While many patients and family participants indicated the PODS-ICU was informative and useful, ICU nurses reported that the PODS-ICU was “not reasonable” in their daily clinical workflow due to “time constraint”.
The PODS-ICU tool provides patients and their families with essential information as they discharge from the ICU. This tool has the potential to engage and empower patients and their families in ensuring continuity of care beyond ICU discharge. However, the PODS-ICU requires pairing with earlier discharge practices and integration with electronic clinical information systems to fit better into the clinical workflow for ICU nurses. Further refinement and testing of the PODS-ICU tool in diverse critical care settings is needed to better assess its feasibility and its effects on patient health outcomes.
Core Tip: Critically ill patients face a difficult transition when moving home from an intensive care unit. In order to ease this transition, we developed and pilot tested a patient-oriented discharge summary tool that included information about medications, activity and diet restrictions, follow-up appointments, symptoms to expect, and who to call if there are questions. We found that critically ill patients and their families found the tool to be very informative. However, nurse practitioners found the discharge tool to be time consuming to complete and a poor fit into their clinical workflow. Further revision and testing of the tool is needed to better assess it’s feasibility and determine any impact it may have on patient health outcomes.