Every day, thousands of people are discharged from hospitals. While relieved to be going home, they are often frightened and insecure about caring for themselves at home. How the hospital manages follow up can make a world of difference in spotting adverse reactions, quelling fears, and providing appropriate direction. Adverse conditions can lead to costly readmissions that hurt the bottom line and dissatisfied consumers who can hurt the hospital's reputation. You Make the Call presents a solid case for a post-discharge call system to improve clinical outcomes and improve the patient experience. This book provides the rationale and key steps for launching a post-discharge follow-up call process. Kristin Baird offers case examples, models, and tools to help you evaluate the need for follow-up calls as well as tools for integrating them into a comprehensive care plan. An award-winning author and consultant, Baird's expertise stems from over 30 years as a nurse, executive, and consultant. Her passion for the patient experience has set her career path and is a driving force behind this book. Are you doing post-discharge follow up? Does it make sense for your organization? Should you devote resources to post-discharge calls? Read Baird's book and then you make the call.

In addition to reprinting the PDF of the CMS CoPs and Interpretive Guidelines, we include key Survey and Certification memos that CMS has issued to announced changes to the emergency preparedness final rule, fire and smoke door annual testing requirements, survey team composition and investigation of complaints, infection control screenings, and legionella risk reduction.

The Roundtable on Health Literacy brings together leaders from academia, industry, government, foundations, and associations and representatives of patient and consumer interests who work to improve health literacy. To achieve its mission, the roundtable discusses challenges facing health literacy practice and research and identifies approaches to promote health literacy through mechanisms and partnerships in both the public and private sectors. To explore the aspects of health literacy that impact the ability of patients to understand and follow discharge instructions and to learn from examples of how discharge instructions can be written to improve patient understanding of-and hence compliance with-discharge instructions, the Roundtable on Health Literacy held a public workshop. The workshop featured presentations and discussions that examined the implications of health literacy for discharge instructions for both ambulatory and inpatient facilities. Facilitating Patient Understanding of Discharge Instructions summarizes the presentations and discussions of the workshop. This report gives an overview of the impact of discharge instructions on outcomes, and discusses the specifics of inpatient discharge summaries and outpatient after-visit summaries. The report also contains case studies illustrating different approaches to improving discharge instructions.

Discharge phone call is a new approach that many hospitals are utilizing to ensure a patient's safe transition home. A study showed that 65 percent of patients said, during hospitalization, no one discussed about managing their care at home (Clark et al., 2005). Hospital reimbursements are based on performance measures for patient satisfaction, as well as 30-day readmission rates, hospitals are seeking alternatives to improve the patient experience and prevent readmissions (D'Amore et al., 2011). Discharge phone call provides an opportunity for the patient to ask questions, while allowing healthcare providers to assess the patient's understanding of the discharge instructions. We piloted the discharge phone call on the surgical unit. The targeted population were those anticipating to be discharge home with a urinary catheter. Nurses were provided with two inservices and a discharge checklist to review key teaching points for patients going home with urinary catheter/ leg bag. Over 50 percent of nurses attended the inservices. A poster board was created highlighting 10 easy steps to follow when teaching patients anticipating discharge with a catheter. Follow up phone calls were made within 48hrs after discharge to ensure quality teaching and that all concerns were answered. Post inservices, nurses were more comfortable and confident with educating and discharging patient with a urinary catheter. During the piloted period, results from the discharge phone calls showed that patients did not have any signs and symptoms of infection but instead other concerns were found and addressed on a as needed basis. Discharge phone call is still new and needs further research

It’s your complete guide to nursing — from basic concepts to essential skills! Fundamentals of Nursing, 9th Edition prepares you to succeed as a nurse by providing a solid foundation in critical thinking, evidence-based practice, nursing theory, and safe clinical care in all settings. With illustrated, step-by-step guidelines, this book makes it easy to learn important skills and procedures. Care plans are presented within a nursing process framework, and case studies show how to apply concepts to nursing practice. From an expert author team led by Patricia Potter and Anne Griffin Perry, this bestselling nursing textbook helps you develop the understanding and clinical reasoning you need to provide excellent patient care. 51 skills demonstrations provide illustrated, step-by-step instructions for safe nursing care — and include rationales for each step. 29 procedural guidelines provide streamlined, step-by-step instructions for performing basic skills. UNIQUE! Critical Thinking Models in each clinical chapter show how to apply the nursing process and critical thinking to achieve successful clinical outcomes. Evidence-Based Practice chapter shows how nursing research helps in determining best practices. UNIQUE! Caring for the Cancer Survivor chapter prepares nurses to care for cancer patients who may still face physical and emotional issues. Case studies include unique clinical application questions and exercises, allowing you to practice using care plans and concept maps. The 5-step nursing process provides a consistent framework for care, and is demonstrated in more than 20 care plans. 15 review questions in every chapter test your retention of key concepts, with answers available in the book and on the Evolve companion website. Practical study tools on Evolve include video clips of skills, skills checklists, printable key points, a fluid & electrolytes tutorial, a concept map creator, an audio glossary, and more. UNIQUE! Clear, streamlined writing style makes complex material more approachable. More than 20 concept maps show care planning for clients with multiple nursing diagnoses. Key points and key terms in each chapter summarize important content for more efficient review and study. Unexpected Outcomes and Related Interventions for each skill alert you to potential problems and appropriate nursing actions. Delegation coverage clarifies which tasks can and cannot be delegated. A glossary provides quick access to definitions for all key terms.

Now more than ever, effective communication skills are key for successful patient care and positive outcomes. Arnold and Boggs’s Interpersonal Relationships: Professional Communication Skills for Canadian Nurses helps you develop essential skills for communicating effectively with patients, families, and colleagues in order to achieve treatment goals in health care. Using clear, practical guidelines, it shows how to enhance the nurse-patient relationship through proven communication strategies, as well as principles drawn from nursing, psychology, and related theoretical frameworks. With a uniquely Canadian approach, and a variety of case studies, interactive exercises, and evidence-informed practice studies, this text ensures you learn how to apply theory to real-life practice.

There have always been homeless people in the United States, but their plight has only recently stirred widespread public reaction and concern. Part of this new recognition stems from the problem's prevalence: the number of homeless individuals, while hard to pin down exactly, is rising. In light of this, Congress asked the Institute of Medicine to find out whether existing health care programs were ignoring the homeless or delivering care to them inefficiently. This book is the report prepared by a committee of experts who examined these problems through visits to city slums and impoverished rural areas, and through an analysis of papers written by leading scholars in the field.

Americans are accustomed to anecdotal evidence of the health care crisis. Yet, personal or local stories do not provide a comprehensive nationwide picture of our access to health care. Now, this book offers the long-awaited health equivalent of national economic indicators. This useful volume defines a set of national objectives and identifies indicatorsâ€"measures of utilization and outcomeâ€"that can "sense" when and where problems occur in accessing specific health care services. Using the indicators, the committee presents significant conclusions about the situation today, examining the relationships between access to care and factors such as income, race, ethnic origin, and location. The committee offers recommendations to federal, state, and local agencies for improving data collection and monitoring. This highly readable and well-organized volume will be essential for policymakers, public health officials, insurance companies, hospitals, physicians and nurses, and interested individuals.