The problem is that the discharge process on my orthopedic surgical unit is long and drawn out with really no organization to it. The doctors do not place discharge orders by a certain time, making it difficult to get our new surgical patients in their rooms. The doctors also do not always have all their discharge instructions in the discharge summary, and then this causes delays in the timing of the discharge. Proficient and timely discharge has an impact on patient satisfaction levels. The goal would be to have the doctors place a discharge by a certain time, so that the patients can be discharged earlier making them happier and allows for other new surgical patients to get a room faster. I understand some patients may not fall into these criteria, but most can be discharged earlier. Utilizing a discharge nurse could be beneficial to getting patients out on time. Since discharging patients is all they would be doing, they would have more time to effectively discharge the patient in a timely manner. All changes do not lead to improvement, but all improvement requires change. Having the ability to develop, test, and implement changes is essential to see positive changes. Actual improvement …show more content…
This will help in delays of getting patients discharged. If the discharge nurse cannot make it in time, then the bedside nurse can also do the discharge. This planned change would happen immediately, but will likely take many months for it to actually work. I will give this plan a two-month time change. The doctors have to be encouraged to continue to do this. They also want their patients out faster, so that they can get their surgical patients in for the day. Reevaluations will need to be done in these next two months to work out all the trouble