Poster Presentation
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
9:45 AM - 11:00 AM
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
1:00 PM - 2:15 PM
Improving Neonatal Outcomes through a Multidisciplinary Discharge Process
Kathryn M. Rudd, RNC, MSN, Maternal Child Nursing, MetroHealth Medical Center, Cleveland, OH, USA
| Learning Objective #1: describe the development of leadership activities aimed at forming an interdisciplinary team that addresses the discharge needs of the neonate through coordination, communication, and the development of a comprehensive discharge program. Through the coordination of all disciplines, a formal discharge process was developed that addressed the discharge needs of the neonate's family and also served to educate the neonatal nurse to not only contribute to the development of this project, but benefit from its coordination of resources from the multidisciplinary team and thereby improve neonatal practice. |
| Learning Objective #2: identify and construct the coordination and development of educational materials aimed at the neonate's family that will prepare that family unit for discharge. The direct benefit of our outcome is a better prepared high risk family for discharge. |
Discharge planning is essential to ensure seamless care for patients. It involves evaluating and organizing a patient's medical, physical, and social requirements at the time of the hospital admission. Planning and development of discharge educational materials will lead to an efficient, timely, and safe patient focused discharge system. The outcomes for evidence-based practice will focus on developing a comprehensive discharge process. The leadership challenge is a 52 bed level III neonatal intensive care unit in a county hospital in Cleveland, Ohio. The majority of the population are high risk clients with many associated risk factors that will impact the client's family in their ability to successfully and safely care for these high risk children in the home setting. This project aimed to coordinate and develop educational materials aimed at the neonate's family that will answer the educational needs and better prepare the family unit for discharge. The direct benefit will be to prepare high risk families for discharge and therefore to lower the rate of hospital readmission and death during the first year after birth. A quantitative study is in progress to test the efficacy of this program. The educational materials included the development of a discharge checklist, a discharge video, and a discharge guidebook, as well as a discharge informational book for the neonatal nursing staff. By developing my leadership abilities in this project, I formed an interdisciplinary team that addressed the client's family needs by developing a comprehensive program that addressed the discharge needs of these families. By coordinating all disciplines, an organized formal discharge process was implemented. This discharge coordination project also served to educate the neonatal nurse to not only contribute to the development of this project but benefit from its coordination of resources from the multidisciplinary team and thereby improved neonatal practice.