Article Alert : Patient-focused Information on Emergency Department Discharge

Awareness of diagnosis and follow up care after discharge from the emergency department
Leamy K, Thompson J, Mitra B
Australasian Emergency Care. 2019;22(4):221-226.

This Australian study looked at whether providing emergency department (ED) patients with more detailed information – a simplified discharge card – increased their understanding. It is standard for patients to receive a discharge summary after an ED visit, but the authors of this paper sought to see if a simplified discharge information card could improve patients’ awareness of their discharge diagnosis and follow-up requirements.

This was a prospective pre-post design interventional study with 112 patients in the pre-intervention group and 117 in the post-intervention group. The authors concluded that the patient-focused communication, in the form of a discharge information card, improved the patients' awareness of discharge diagnoses and follow-up requirements.

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