The Extent of Nurses' Discharge Education to the Patient's Preparedness for Self-Management

Abstract

Background:Nurses are known for providing their patients with comprehensive care; patient education through discharge instructions typically falls short of expectations due to understaffing and work overload. Patient self-management of their health conditions at home demands adequate discharge education. Insufficient discharge education can compromise patients' ability to manage their health conditions at home, causing unplanned hospital readmissions. When the patients feel that they are being cared for through the provision of discharge education, they are likely to comply with the instructions given, which may contribute to the patient's optimal well-being and may prevent hospital readmission. Objective: This study aimed to determine the correlation between nurses' extentofdischargeeducationandpatients'preparednessforself-management.Methods:Adescriptive-correlational research design was used to determine the correlation between nurses' extent of discharge education and patients' preparedness for self-management. One hundred eight (108) respondents were selected through consecutive sampling. They answered the Medication, Exercise, Health Teaching, Outpatient Patient Department Visit, Referral, Diet, and Spirituality (MEHORDS) discharge assessment tool. MEHORDS is a researcher-made questionnaire with 0.756 and 0.789 reliability coefficients for assessing nurses' extent of discharge education and patients' preparedness for self-management, respectively. Results:The study shows that most of the respondents are middle-aged adults (22.22%), male (57%), married (63.89%), high school graduates (69.44%), unemployed (61.11%), with cerebrovascular disease (35.91%), and have experienced at least one hospital readmission (37.96%). The study revealed that respondents received a poor level of discharge education (x=1.49) during their discharge process and had no overall preparedness (x = 1.75) for self-management. Moreover, there is a significant positive correlation between the nurses' discharge education and patients' preparedness for self-management (p=0.001). Conclusion:This study highlighted the importance of providing nurses comprehensive discharge education in promoting patients' self-management. Incorporating the MEHORDS contents may not only assist the nurses in managing their time in the provision of discharge education to patients but also serve as a guide to nurses in delivering a thorough discharge education