Information sharing following discharge of psychiatric inpatients: Improving the quality of discharge summaries

Abstract

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Discharge summaries are valuable clinical documents providing information not only about the acute presentation and progression but also suggestions for future management to maintain the continuity of care. This is important in multidisciplinary, multiagency mental healthcare. AIM: It was intended to evaluate the discharge summaries for adult psychiatric inpatients, about the information shared such as the reason for admission, diagnoses, medications, progress in the ward, and legal status with an overarching aim to inform about the quality improvement of discharge summaries. METHODS: It was a service evaluation of a stratified random sample of 86 discharges from younger adult psychiatry wards, from which 73 discharge summaries were evaluated. RESULTS: The sample had 44 male and 42 female patients, with an average inpatient stay of 27.3 ± 40.8 days. Most (81.4%) of the patients had informal admission. Most patients (96.5%) had a psychiatric diagnosis; the common diagnoses were schizophrenia (24.4%), bipolar disorder (15.1%), personality disorder (17.4%), and depression (11.6%). Discharge summaries were sent on an average of 21.3 + 17.7 days (median 15 days). Most discharge summaries mentioned psychiatric diagnoses (97.3%), list of medications and dosage (95.9%), legal status during admission (74.0%), reason for admission (97.3%), and progress in the ward (97.3%). CONCLUSIONS: There is a scope to improve discharge summaries by adopting an appropriately structured format containing essential clinical information, which can be useful for maintaining continuity of patient care.