Exploring delayed hospital discharge
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Exploring delayed hospital discharge: an ethnographic study at Colchester Hospital
IRAS ID
240478
Contact name
Jennifer Rogerson
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Healthwatch Essex
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 4 months, 1 days
Research summary
Hospital discharge is an important component of a patient’s care trajectory that is initiated at the point a person enters a hospital and becomes a patient. It is important because it develops and establishes how a person will convalesce, returning from hospital as a healthy, integrated citizen. The Francis report (2013) suggests that people receive varying quality in care preceding their leaving, and upon leaving hospital, related to discharge. People leaving hospital are recuperating from illness and/or surgery and require sensitive health and social care. It is therefore even more critical that they receive timeous, appropriate care-giving. Thus, we aim to explore the reasons for delayed discharge.
We will work at Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust (CHUFT). We aim to conduct research with approximately 10-12 people intensively as well as those who are observed in wards over a six – eight-week period as they are prepared by hospital staff to be discharged, using participant-observation. A range of people will be chosen: people going home, people going to a care home, hospice or a family member’s home. There will also be people categorised as needing minimal or complex discharge care. The researchers will shadow these patients over the course of their preparation for discharge, the actual discharge, and for a period in the place where they go after being discharged. While the numbers are low, the research is intended to be richly ethnographic. The intention therefore, is to develop a full, robust picture of the issues at stake in transitions to care by doing ‘a day in the life’ of patients and staff, tracing the ways discharge happens. We will also include mapping exercises, which allow us to examine how people move across the hospital discharge terrain, offering detailed accounts of how people physically and emotionally move through the discharge process.REC name
London - Harrow Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/LO/0120
Date of REC Opinion
10 Jul 2018
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion