Abstract

Discharge planning (DP) is a crucial part in continuous nursing care and its aim is to prepare the patient and the family to return home. Discharge planning has not been optimally conducted. The study’s purposes are to identify the implementation of discharge planning, to develop an organized discharge planning model and to evaluate the implementation of this model. An action research with triangulation studies approach was utilized, in which at the first stage, the on going discharge planning was assessed. The second stage included the implementation of development and the trial of CD-based DP. The third stage was the evaluation of the model by means of documentation, questionnaire and patient and nurse interviews. It was found that nurse’s knowledge of DP was significantly improved after the DP model was introduced (mean before = 11.6, mean after = 16.81 and p value = 0.000). CD-based DP learning was also found to be significantly increased by the number of DP given by nurses (mean before = 50.3, mean after = 59.33 and p value = 0.000). In addition, study of the nursing documentation indicated that the DP CDs have been used by 62 patients. From the interviews with nurse leaders and staff, it was identified that the DP CDs were perceived as useful to assist DP. Accordingly, patients and their families asserted that the DP CDs were very helpful.

Key words: Discharge planning, information technology, learning media, nursing.