A Care Guide for Successfully Educating Patients
Jie Hu, Ellen Jones · NC Digital Online Collection of Knowledge and Scholarship (The University of North Carolina at Greensboro) · 2010
Frustration over the lack of preparation for the patient at discharge is, unfortunately, all too familiar for nurses today. After the primary care provider has written the discharge order, nurses find themselves the last resource. Often, the patient will have questions about medications, diet, activity guidelines, or follow-up that were not addressed by the physician. The nurse must now provide answers. Most patients have become so overloaded with information throughout their hospital stay that there is little chance they will be able to remember all the instructions to guide their first days at home. Nurses, for the most part, do all they can possibly do to educate patients. Most realize that discharge starts with admission; however, patient education has become so routine that often nurses are doing an insufficient job as patient educators.