Date of Paper/Work
5-2023
Type of Paper/Work
Doctor of Nursing Practice Project
Degree Name
Doctor of Nursing Practice
Department
Nursing
First Advisor
Teresa Cyrus
Department/School
Doctor of Nursing Practice
Abstract
Staff nurses in a Midwestern metropolitan hospital experienced dissatisfaction with the discharge process due to complexities and lack of readily available information. By creating a discharge planning tool that is centrally located within the electronic health record, this quality improvement project aimed to improve nurse satisfaction with the discharge process while positively impacting the length of stay and discharges before noon. Pre-intervention and post- intervention surveys were created using a 5-point Likert scale; surveys were distributed to the nurses via e-mail and as paper copies. The data for the discharges before noon and length of stay was extracted from existing dashboards in three-month increments for pre-intervention, during the project, and post-intervention. Descriptive statistics were used to evaluate the data. Results of the nurse satisfaction post-intervention surveys indicated a 17% increase in “always” or “almost always” satisfied with the discharge process. Based on the information that was pulled from the dashboards, length of stay decreased from an average of 5.17 days pre-intervention to 4.63 days post-intervention. There was a decreased number of discharges before noon in the post-implementation data, but there was also a sharp increase in the total number of discharges that took in the post-implementation time frame. The benefits of this project include a user- friendly discharge planning tool, and the findings contribute to easily accessed content for discharge planning for a systems-level, multidisciplinary care transitions overhaul within the hospital, as well as a culture change in the hospital to consistently include the staff nurse in the discharge planning process.
Recommended Citation
Rammer, Rebecca; Akpojotor,, Emo; and Minnis, Alicia. (2023). Improving Care Transitions and Nurse Satisfaction: A Discharge Planning Tool Quality Improvement Project. Retrieved from Sophia, the St. Catherine University repository website: https://sophia.stkate.edu/dnp_projects/189