Information exchange between registered nurses and district nurses during the discharge planning process: cross-sectional analysis of survey data

Abstract

Objectives: Discharge planning is an important care process for managing transitions from the hospital to the community. It has been studied for >20 years, but few studies clarify the information exchanged between healthcare providers. This study aimed to describe nurses’ experiences and perceptions of information exchange during the discharge planning process, focused on what, when and how information is exchanged between the hospital and primary healthcare.

Method: A web-based census survey was used to collect data; the data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and chi-squared test. A questionnaire was distributed to 194 registered nurses (129 respondents) from a central county hospital and 67 district nurses (42 respondents) working in 13 primary healthcare centres.

Results: The results show a significant difference between given and received information between the two groups. Both groups thought the information exchange worked best when all participants met at the discharge planning conference and that the electronic information system was difficult to use.

Conclusion: This study shows difficulties knowing what patient-related information needs to give and not receiving the expected information. These results can be used to develop knowledge about roles, work tasks and needs to enhance the outcome of the process and the information exchanged.

• Discharge planning process
• information exchange
• nurses
• quantitative research
• survey

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the management and staff at the hospital and healthcare centres for their participation in this study. We also acknowledge Mr Robert Lundqvist, statistician at the Department of Research, Norrbotten County Council, who helped with the analysis and manuscript preparation.

Declaration of interest

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest. This research was funded by 2nd goal EU contributions through Health Innovation Centre, Department of Health Science, Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden.

AUTHORS’ CONTRIBUTIONS

Study design: S.N., S.S., L.S.; Data collection: S.N.; Data analysis: S.N., L.S.; Manuscript preparation: S.N., S.S., L.S.