Hospital discharge: What matters to older people and families?
Hospital discharge is a really difficult area of policy and practice for a range of reasons – but it tends to hit the headlines because of the impact it has on the health service, rather than the impact it has on older people and families.
In practice, both are important – but we need to make sure that we’re focusing on outcomes that matter to people and that we don’t only see adult social care through the lens of the NHS.
What matters to older people and families?
The evidence
We worked with the University of Birmingham’s Knowledge and Evidence Service to look at things that the evidence suggests matter to older people and families – some of which might not always be things that services think about as much as they perhaps could.
This should not get in the way of official policy and practice guidance already in place in different parts of the UK or the different initiatives and good practice examples that exist in different nations. However, this guide sets out some things that we could easily miss if we were not really focused on the needs of individual people.
[A note on terminology – when we talk about ‘going home’, we mean returning to the place that the person calls home, whatever type of housing this is. The key thing is that it’s home from the point of view of the person.]
Other resources
As part of our search of the evidence, we came across a variety of other resources that might help you.
Feedback
Have you used or shared this guide, or one of our others? Have the actions made a difference to your practice or life? Tell us!