Discharged from hospital: should more responsibility for meeting patients’ and carers’ information needs now be shouldered in the community?

Abstract

This paper reports some of the findings from a recently completed study that aimed to build up a patient‐centred account of their pre‐ and postdischarge information needs and their perceptions of how these were met in a typically busy hospital context and later at home. This was an ethnographic study, with data collected through observation, by serial interviewing of patients (n = 50), in interviews with carers and through focus groups with hospital and community staff (mainly nurses). This paper focuses on those findings that highlight the highly individual nature of patients’ information needs; the real difficulties for hospital staff in attempting to meet these needs comprehensively; and the unavoidable ‘information gap’ that emerges in the postdischarge period and which leaves at least some patients feeling anxious and uncertain about whether (and how) to actively seek out advice. The view that hospital staff are responsible for ensuring that patients are adequately informed while still in hospital continues to be held among community staff. We argue, however, that this may be an unrealistic expectation in this era of short hospitalisation and primary care‐led services, and that more responsibility for meeting information needs should now be shouldered in the community.