Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Crit Care Med. Jul 9, 2022; 11(4): 255-268
Published online Jul 9, 2022. doi: 10.5492/wjccm.v11.i4.255
Development and pilot implementation of a patient-oriented discharge summary for critically Ill patients
Anmol Shahid, Bonnie Sept, Shelly Kupsch, Rebecca Brundin-Mather, Danijela Piskulic, Andrea Soo, Christopher Grant, Jeanna Parsons Leigh, Kirsten M Fiest, Henry T Stelfox
Anmol Shahid, Bonnie Sept, Shelly Kupsch, Rebecca Brundin-Mather, Andrea Soo, Christopher Grant, Jeanna Parsons Leigh, Kirsten M Fiest, Henry T Stelfox, Department of Critical Care Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary T2N 4Z6, Alberta, Canada
Danijela Piskulic, Department of Psychiatry, Hotchkiss Brain Institute, Calgary T2N 4Z6, Alberta, Canada
Jeanna Parsons Leigh, School of Health Administration, Dalhousie University, Halifax B3H 4R2, Nova Scotia, Canada
Author contributions: Shahid A drafted the manuscript; all authors have contributed to the conception, design of this study, critically revised the manuscript and approved of the final submitted version.
Institutional review board statement: The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki (1983). All methods were performed in accordance with the relevant guidelines and regulations by the University of Calgary Health Research Ethics Board, which granted institutional ethics approval for this study (18-1770). We also established a research agreement with the primary health custodian, Alberta Health Services (AHS) to permit us to conduct this study in the two identified ICUs and to access participant data via AHS health information systems.
Informed consent statement: Written informed consent was collected from all participants prior to the study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: There are no conflicts-of-interest to declare.
Data sharing statement: The dataset is available from the corresponding author at tstelfox@ucalgary.ca.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement—checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement—checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Anmol Shahid, BSc, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Critical Care Medicine, University of Calgary, McCaig Tower, Ground Floor, 3260 Hospital Drive NW, Calgary T2N 4Z6, Alberta, Canada. anmol.shahid1@ucalgary.ca
Received: March 1, 2022
Peer-review started: March 1, 2022
First decision: April 13, 2022
Revised: May 6, 2022
Accepted: June 18, 2022
Article in press: June 18, 2022
Published online: July 9, 2022
Processing time: 127 Days and 11 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Critically ill patients face a difficult transition when moving home from an intensive care unit. In order to ease this transition, we developed and pilot tested a patient-oriented discharge summary tool that included information about medications, activity and diet restrictions, follow-up appointments, symptoms to expect, and who to call if there are questions. We found that critically ill patients and their families found the tool to be very informative. However, nurse practitioners found the discharge tool to be time consuming to complete and a poor fit into their clinical workflow. Further revision and testing of the tool is needed to better assess it’s feasibility and determine any impact it may have on patient health outcomes.