Patients involvement in the discharge process from hospital to home: A patient's journey.

AIMS: The aims of the study were to gain insight in the transfer process from hospital to homecare or rehabilitation centre from a patient's perspectives and to describe the experienced involvement, information provision and information needs patients. DESIGN: A multiple case study with a phenomenological approach. METHODS: Observations and interviews were employed, between May 2019 and August 2019, to capture the patient's perspectives and experiences on involvement, information provision and needs. Observations were executed during the discharge process from hospital to homecare (n = 6) or revalidation centre (n = 1) and during admission interviews with community nurses (n = 6). Interviews were conducted at the patient's home and the revalidation centre. RESULTS: Eight themes were identified within three phases of the transfer process. The Sign-up phase contained two themes: 'organizing follow-up care' and 'planning the moment of discharge from the hospital'. The two themes in the Transfer phase were, 'verbal information provision' and 'written information provision'. Four themes were identified in the End phase: 'nursing supplies', 'medication', 'the electronic patient portal' and 'continuation of (para)medical care'. CONCLUSIONS: Patient participation in the transition process from the hospital to follow-up care can be improved. This study indicates that unsafe situations could be prevented by patient involvement and clear perceptions of the role and responsibilities of patients, family and healthcare professionals. IMPLICATIONS TO PATIENT CARE: Patient and family involvement has the potential to improve transition of care and techniques for shared decision-making can be applied to a greater extent. IMPACT: This paper highlights that patients and families should be acknowledged as key figures in the transfer process and gives direction to healthcare professionals on how to increase involvement in the transfer process by actively inviting patients to participate in the transfer process. REPORTING METHOD: COREQ guidelines for qualitative reporting. No patient or public contribution. CONTRIBUTION TO GLOBAL CLINICAL COMMUNITY: This paper gives insights in patients' and families' perspectives on transition of nursing care and their involvement during the whole transfer process. This paper gives direction how to improve patient participation during the discharge process from hospital to follow-up care.

A nationwide survey of patient problem occurrence across different nursing healthcare sectors.

AIM: The aim of this study was to determine the patient problems that nurses encounter in different clinical settings and the extent to which they report being able to influence those patient problems. DESIGN: Exploratory online survey research. METHOD: Data were collected through an online questionnaire. We prepared a 2 × 2 matrix to compare the rate of occurrence against the average level of reported influence. Descriptive statistics were used for the data analysis. RESULTS: A total of 440 nurses working in different settings completed the questionnaire. Nurses report having the most influence on patient problems related to self-care, mobility and functions of the skin. Nurses experience less influence on problems with voice/speech and the tasks required for participation in work/employment.

Concordance between nurse-reported quality of care and quality of care as publicly reported by nurse-sensitive indicators.

BACKGROUND: Nurse-sensitive indicators and nurses' satisfaction with the quality of care are two commonly used ways to measure quality of nursing care. However, little is known about the relationship between these kinds of measures. This study aimed to examine concordance between nurse-sensitive screening indicators and nurse-perceived quality of care. METHODS: To calculate a composite performance score for each of six Dutch non-university teaching hospitals, the percentage scores of the publicly reported nurse-sensitive indicators: screening of delirium, screening of malnutrition, and pain assessments, were averaged (2011). Nurse-perceived quality ratings were obtained from staff nurses working in the same hospitals by the Dutch Essentials of Magnetism II survey (2010). Concordance between the quality measures was analyzed using Spearman's rank correlation. RESULTS: The mean screening performances ranged from 63% to 93% across the six hospitals. Nurse-perceived quality of care differed significantly between the hospitals, also after adjusting for nursing experience, educational level, and regularity of shifts. The hospitals with high-levels of nurse-perceived quality were also high-performing hospitals according to nurse-sensitive indicators. The relationship was true for high-performing as well as lower-performing hospitals, with strong correlations between the two quality measures (rS = 0.943, p = 0.005). CONCLUSIONS: Our findings showed that there is a significant positive association between objectively measured nurse-sensitive screening indicators and subjectively measured perception of quality. Moreover, the two indicators of quality of nursing care provide corresponding quality rankings. This implies that improving factors that are associated with nurses' perception of what they believe to be quality of care may also lead to better screening processes. Although convergent validity seems to be established, we emphasize that different kinds of quality measures could be used to complement each other, because various stakeholders may assign different values to the quality of nursing care.

How nurses and their work environment affect patient experiences of the quality of care: a qualitative study.

BACKGROUND: Healthcare organisations monitor patient experiences in order to evaluate and improve the quality of care. Because nurses spend a lot of time with patients, they have a major impact on patient experiences. To improve patient experiences of the quality of care, nurses need to know what factors within the nursing work environment are of influence. The main focus of this research was to comprehend the views of Dutch nurses on how their work and their work environment contribute to positive patient experiences. METHODS: A descriptive qualitative research design was used to collect data. Four focus groups were conducted, one each with 6 or 7 registered nurses in mental health care, hospital care, home care and nursing home care. A total of 26 nurses were recruited through purposeful sampling. The interviews were audiotaped, transcribed and subjected to thematic analysis. RESULTS: The nurses mentioned essential elements that they believe would improve patient experiences of the quality of nursing care: clinically competent nurses, collaborative working relationships, autonomous nursing practice, adequate staffing, control over nursing practice, managerial support and patient-centred culture. They also mentioned several inhibiting factors, such as cost-effectiveness policy and transparency goals for external accountability. Nurses feel pressured to increase productivity and report a high administrative workload. They stated that these factors will not improve patient experiences of the quality of nursing care. CONCLUSIONS: According to participants, a diverse range of elements affect patient experiences of the quality of nursing care. They believe that incorporating these elements into daily nursing practice would result in more positive patient experiences. However, nurses work in a healthcare context in which they have to reconcile cost-efficiency and accountability with their desire to provide nursing care that is based on patient needs and preferences, and they experience a conflict between these two approaches. Nurses must gain autonomy over their own practice in order to improve patient experiences.