Commentary on Dunnion ME & Kelly HW (2005) From the emergency department to home: discharge planning and communication of information between an emergency department and primary care sector following discharge of older people from an emergency department of a rural general hospital. Journal of Clinical Nursing 14, 776-785.

摘要

The need for a more proactive and effective approach to discharge planning for older people going home from Emergency Departments (EDs) is usefully highlighted by Dunnion and Kelly's paper. However, the huge scale and importance ofthis universal challenge is perhaps not fully reflected in their report of this locally based study in one ED in Ireland.Presumably, because this study focused on staff perceptions of ED discharge management, we are not told much about the patient population in the study setting other than the total number of admissions over a one-year period and, of those, the number who were 'older patients' (5506 of 28 004).