“Can we just stop and talk?” patients value verbal communication about discharge care plans

BACKGROUND: Studies show that hospitalized patients often do not understand their postdischarge care plan. There are few studies about patients' preferences regarding the content of discharge care plans. OBJECTIVE: To identify what patients view as essential elements of a post‐hospitalization plan. DESIGN: Anonymous written survey distributed on the second day of admission to internal medicine wards. SETTING: An academic tertiary care hospital and an academic county hospital in Seattle, Washington. PATIENTS: Two hundred English‐speaking adult inpatients ≥18 years or their proxies. RESULTS: The majority of patients (64.5%) surveyed wanted verbal discharge instructions, with only 10.5% requesting written instructions ( P < 0.0001). One hundred percent of patients valued the following discharge instructions as essential: “when you need to follow‐up with [primary care provider] PCP,” “warning signs to call PCP,” and “medicines to continue post‐hospitalization.” One hundred percent of patients wanted “a lot of information about my condition” and “test results,” but only 39% wanted “a lot of information about my medications” ( P < 0.0001). When asked to choose the most important piece of discharge instruction related to their disease, 67.5% of patients chose “lifestyle changes.” One hundred percent of patients thought that personal communication between the inpatient provider and the outpatient primary care provider was “extremely important” or “essential.” CONCLUSION: Patients uniformly placed high value on: 1) verbal communication about discharge care plans; 2) information about lifestyle changes for improved health; and 3) personal communication between inpatient and outpatient providers. Journal of Hospital Medicine 2012. © 2012 Society of Hospital Medicine