Date of Award

Fall 11-30-2022

Document Type

Scholarly Project

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

Department

Nursing

First Advisor

Hilary Morgan, PhD, CNM, CNE

Second Advisor

Susan Hammond, DNP, MBA, RN, NE-BC

Abstract

Practice Problem: In Maryland, the most recent coronavirus disease (COVID-19) surge caused a significant increase in hospitalization and urgent demand for critical care beds. The identified delays in discharging patients from the emergency department to inpatient units resulted in more extended hospital stays, higher complication rates, and morbidity, which also impacted the health care organization's finances.

PICOT: The PICOT question that guided this project was in a medicine-telemetry unit (P), does the implementation of an enhanced electronic discharge planning tool (I) compared to the current discharge planning tool (C) affect timely discharge (O) during an eight-week time period (T)?.

Evidence: The synthesis of ten articles consisting of eight primary research and two systematic reviews resulted in eight eligible studies that support implementing an evidence-based project to increase timely discharge and bed availability.

Intervention: The use of an enhanced electronic discharge planning tool was implemented for eight weeks in a medicine-telemetry unit on discharges to home as the intervention.

Outcome: The result shows a 25% improvement in discharge process time. Although the 50% goal was not achieved, the findings suggest that enhancing the discharge planning tool positively impacts the time spent printing the after-visit summary sheet and the discharge process.

Conclusion: The enhanced electronic discharge planning tool provided structure to the current discharge planning tool by eliminating the manual work surrounding the process. This project helped leaders improve patient and employee satisfaction and contributed to the organization's financial success.

Comments

Scholarly project submitted to the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Nursing Practice

Additional Files
Cafirma_C_DNP Copyright Statement.pdf (66 kB)

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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