Patients need more instructions at time of discharge
Physicians must spend more time explaining post-discharge treatment plans to their patients, write investigators in the May 12 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.
David R. Calkins, MD, of the University of Kansas in Kansas City and a team of researchers from Harvard University in Boston surveyed 99 physicians and their recently discharged patients on their perceptions of post-discharge treatment instructions. The patients in the study had been treated in the hospital for either acute MI or pneumonia. Researchers found that physicians overestimate what their patients understand about post-discharge treatment plans.
The multicenter team learned that only 58% of the patients recently discharged from the hospital frequently reported understanding the potential side effects of their medication or when they could resume normal activities. But 95% of the physicians believed their patients did understand.
Calkins wrote that "more extended and targeted patient-physician discussions of discharge plans might help narrow the differences in perceptions of those plans."
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