Three cohorts of patients, discharged within three, 12-month periods from a tertiary referral Neuropsychiatry/Epilepsy Unit, were asked whether they felt their condition had improved as a result of their admission, how they valued the admission and how easy they had found the admission to manage. They were also asked about their psychological and psychosocial state. For the first cohort a longe...

IMPORTANCE With growing national focus on reducing readmissions, there is a need to comprehensively assess the quality of transitional care, including discharge practices, patient perspectives, and patient understanding. OBJECTIVE To conduct a multifaceted evaluation of transitional care from a patient-centered perspective. DESIGN Prospective observational cohort study, May 2009 through Apr...

1. The characteristics of the threshold excitation behavior of the squid giant axon were investigated with condenser discharges, exponentially blunted D. c. shocks, sinusoidal currents, and brief condenser-discharge test shocks superimposed at either electrode at controlled brief intervals following the closing of a constant current. 2. Data obtained by the use of condenser discharges and expon...

The San Diego/Tijuana border region has several environmental challenges with regard to assessing water quality impacts resulting from local coastal ocean discharges for which transport is not hindered by political boundaries. While an understanding of the fate and transport of these discharged plumes has a broad audience, the spatial and temporal scales of the physical processes present numero...

AIM It is everyday news that we need more intensive care unit (ICU) beds, thus effective use of existing resources is imperative. The aim of this literature review was to critically analyse current literature on how organizational factors, individual factors and teamwork factors influence the ICU discharge process. A better understanding of discharge practices has the potential to ultimately in...

Objectives: The Joint Commission mandates that six components be present in all U.S. hospital discharge summaries. Despite the critical importance of discharge summaries in care transitions and patient safety, no studies have examined how well discharge summaries adhere to Joint Commission standards. Methods: Joint Commission-mandated discharge summary components were specifically defined and a...

The present study investigates patient perceptions of the quality of discharge instruction by assessing inpatients' ratings of care and service in the United States over the past 5 years (1997-2001) (n = 4,901,178). As expected, patients' ratings of "instructions given about how to care for yourself at home" showed a strong, consistent positive relationship with overall patient satisfaction fro...

This work examines the impact of discharge decisions under uncertainty in a capacity-constrained high risk setting: the intensive care unit (ICU). New arrivals to an ICU are typically very high priority patients and, should the ICU be full upon their arrival, discharging a patient currently residing in the ICU may be required to accommodate a newly admitted patient. Patients so discharged risk ...

BACKGROUND Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is responsible for the largest number of discharges against medical advice (AMA). However, there is limited information regarding the reasons for discharges AMA in the CVD setting. OBJECTIVE To identify reasons for discharges AMA among patients with CVD. DESIGN Qualitative study using focus group interviews (FGIs). PARTICIPANTS A convenience sample ...