P061: Barriers to distributing discharge materials in the emergency department

Abstract

Introduction: An efficient discharging process provides an opportunity for the patient to receive information about their diagnosis, prognosis, treatments, follow-up plan and reasons to return. Even when given complete discharge instructions, studies demonstrate that patients have poor retention of the information due to misunderstandings, language barriers, or poor health literacy. This study sought to identify barriers encountered by healthcare workers in providing discharge handouts to emergency department patients. Methods: A bilingual online survey of fifteen questions was shared with Quebec ED staff physicians and residents at the annual conference, and by email correspondence through the Quebec Emergency Medicine Association (AMUQ - L'Association des médecins d'urgence du Québec). Results: There was a total of 126 responses (96 physicians and 30 residents), with a response rate of 22.7% (126/556) and a completion rate of 84.1%. 85.8% (n = 120) responded that they were aware of discharge instructions available in their ED. Most common discharge handouts were concussion/traumatic brain injury and laceration repair. 58.3% of respondents (n = 120) reported having handed out discharge instructions in the last week, 22.5% in the last month, 10.8% within the last 6 months and 5.8% had not given out discharge instructions in the last 6 months. Respondents indicated that the most common barriers to giving out discharge instructions were their difficulty to access and and the time required. 58% of respondents (n = 65) reported handing out discharge handouts less than 50% of the time for conditions that had a discharge handout available at their hospital. Participants reported they would be more likely to give out discharge instructions if they were easier to print and if there was an automatic prompt from the EMR associated with the diagnosis. When asked to rank based on importance (1 = not important to 10 = very important), the majority of respondents thought discharge instructions were very important for patient comprehension, return to ED instructions and managing expectations of the illness (Median 8, Likert scale 1-10, DI 0.29, n = 119). Conclusion: Despite physicians and residents working in the ED believing discharge instructions are important for patient care, handouts are seldom given to patients. The lack of easy availability such as documents automatically available with the prompt of an electronic medical record would likely increase their distribution.