Chapter 8 136 n=4, group II) were evaluated at the emergency department, none of whom required a re-admission. 3.2 Survey among healthcare professionals The survey among those who provided the discharge information (registered nurses, n = 8) and those who prepared the discharge information (nurse practitioners, n = 3), expressed a preference for the novel patient-tailored discharge information documents compared to the conventional booklet information. Registered nurses gave the personalized discharge information an 8.1 ± 0.84 on a scale from 0 to 10 and nurse practitioners gave it a 7.7 ± 0.58 (Table 4). Both nurses and nurse practitioners remarked that the personalized discharge information should be extended into daily practice, chiefly because of the personalized nature, improved consistency of the provided information and that all information was consolidated in one document. In addition, it was also reported by nurses that the novel procedure required less time for preparing and providing the actual discharge information. The reason for this improvement in time-saving was that all the information regarding medication changes, outpatient clinic appointments, etc. was easily included in the personalized discharge information document and did not, therefore, need to be extracted from different sources such as the ward secretary or nurse practitioner. The personalized discharge information is created by the nurse practitioner. This requires more time in composition. However, the nurse practitioners noted that this increase is compensated by the convenience of the ICT tool and that the information was already available. Furthermore, improved uniformity was specified as an improvement of the patient-tailored discharge procedure. 4. Discussion This pilot study evaluated the implementation of a novel discharge procedure, based on a computer-generated patient-tailored document. Importantly, both groups (pre and post-implementation) evaluated the discharge procedure as favourable and comparable, with scores higher than 8.5. Consequently, no further improvement of the provided information may be required. However, a small subgroup of patients, those who initiated teleconsultation with the department after discharge, showed a trend towards increased comprehension of the provided discharge instructions. Although this small group does not reach scientific significance, it is considered by
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw