Literature Review: Evidence-Based Discharge Planning Protocol Student Name Chamberlain College of Nursing NR631: Nurse Executive Concluding Graduate Experience I

Literature Review: Evidence-Based Discharge Planning protocol Discharge planning is the process by which clinicians, patient and families plan for the follow-up care post discharge (Henke, Karaca, Jackson, Mader, & Wong, 2017). There are two types of discharge planning, (a) simple and (b) complex (Lees, 2013). Simple discharge planning is whereby the decision for discharge is being done at ward level with the multidisciplinary clinical team such as medication reconciliation and follow up appointment (Lees, 2013). Complex discharge is define as additional intervention that need to be implemented before a patient is discharge, which are beyond the control of clinical team such home modification, financial assistant and social care needed (Augustinsson & Peterson, 2014; Cammilletti, et al., 2018). In both cases, the planning process should be start prior to admission for planned admission and within 24 hours post admission for unplanned admission (Gonçalves-Bradley, Lannin, Clemson, Cameron, & Shepperd, 2016). This could be achieved through implementation of a discharge planning protocol that will guide all clinicians and involved patient and their relatives (Parikh, Ballester, Ramsey, Kong, & Pook, 2017). Currently, on medical and surgical wards, there is no such protocol in place. As a result, discharge planning is being done on the day of discharge that result in poor discharge. Poor discharge planning leads to delay in patient discharge from the hospital (Zhao, et al., 2018). When patients stayed in the hospital longer than expected, they risk to acquire nosocomial infection increased (Holland, Pacyna, Gillard, & Carter, 2016), the cost of the hospital expenses increased(Rojas-García, et al., 2018) and the availability of empty beds for patients waiting to be admitted from the emergency department and critical care unit is reduced (da Silva, Valacio, Botelho, & Amaral, 2013). To address the above problem a PICOT question was formatted; In the medical/surgical ward, will an evidenc