Discharge Communications (2023)

Discharge Communications

by Dominique Gelmann, Bret Nicks

Introduction

The process of emergency department (ED) discharge provides critical information for patients regarding the next steps of their care. Discharge instructions are often required by hospital accreditation and governmental organizations for quality or monitoring metrics. However, studies show that many patients do not fully understand or recall the instructions they receive [1,2]. In addition to patient-specific factors contributing to lack of comprehension and care compliance, the myriad situational challenges inherent to every emergency department as well as individual clinician skills and knowledge of best discharge practices further impact patient experience, understanding, and subsequent outcomes.

In many instances, the discharge process is often limited to a brief exchange of documents, prescriptions, and verbal description of the diagnosis, frequently leaving patients with uncertainty about their care plan. Understanding discharge instructions can be very challenging for a variety of reasons. Physical or emotional discomfort can impact receptiveness to and comprehension of imparted information, for example. Patients or family members eager to leave may be less interested in the instructions; conversely those presented with a devastating diagnosis may be less able to process specific details.

Moreover, a significant number of patients have low literacy and/or health literacy levels. In addition, the busy ED setting may distract the patient’s attention from such instructions. Understanding the challenges surrounding discharge communications in the ED from the patient’s perspective and having a clear approach and purpose is essential. Much more critical than an afterthought, discharge is the first step of a patient’s care transition and greatly impacts quality outcomes, litigation, experience, and team morale [3,4]. 

Understanding the Challenges

Emergency physicians face unique challenges while ensuring high-quality care due to distractions and time limitations that are common throughout ED settings. In most cases, emergency physicians have little or no previous knowledge of their patients and are unlikely to partake in the follow-up process, making effective communication paramount when patients are discharged from the ED.  Providing clear and consistent communication throughout the entire patient care encounter, including the discharge process, is an important aspect of quality and patient-centered emergency medical care.

Unfortunately, many patients are discharged from the ED with an incomplete understanding of the information needed to safely care for themselves at home or when to promptly return to the ED [1, 5-6]. Patients have particular difficulty comprehending post-ED care instructions regarding medications, home care, and follow-up expectations.  And while all patients discharged from the emergency department should be provided instructions for ongoing management of their medical condition, studies demonstrate that patient recall and understanding of diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up plan are generally quite poor [1,2,5-9].  This raises significant concerns for care plan adherence and medical outcomes, which studies show are poorer in cases of low health literacy.  Given current trends toward value-based care and the fact that nearly half of the lawsuits in emergency medicine revolve around discharge instructions and plans, ongoing improvements in the discharge communication process is essential [3,4].

While some of this relates heavily to the ability of the provider to establish a trusting and positive patient-provider relationship within the ED constraints, several additional strategies can be used to enhance the recall of instructions, improve compliance, and minimize litigation.

Discharge Essentials

Effective discharge communication provides an opportunity for the emergency department team to summarize a patient’s visit, teach them how to safely care for themselves at home, and provide specifics regarding the next steps in their care process. It also gives ED physicians a chance to address any remaining questions or concerns, often augmenting patient and family understanding while improving care plan retention.  Although patient education at discharge typically begins with initial assessments and conversations with patients and family, other factors can also influence the success or failure of how information is transmitted at discharge.

Common interventions promoting an effective ED discharge process include using a standardized approach to relaying content, providing various modes of information delivery and tailoring them to the individual patient, confirmation of comprehension, post-discharge care follow-up planning, review of vital signs, and a patient-centered closure (Table 1) [8,9].

Table 1: Interventions in the ED Discharge Process

Domain

Intervention

Content

Standardize approach

Delivery

Verbal instructions (language and culture appropriate)

 

Written instructions (mindful of lower literacy levels)

 

Basic Instructions (including return precautions)

 

Media, visual cues, or adjuncts

Comprehension

Confirm comprehension (teach-back method)

Implementation

Resource connections (Rx, appointment, durable medical supplies, follow-up)

 

Medication review

Content refers to the education provided to our patients related to their ED testing, procedures, and treatment, as well as further education on diagnosis, expected course of illness, post-ED treatment and follow-up plan, and medication reconciliation. Instructions should specifically highlight time-sensitive next steps in care plans, including when and how to schedule follow-up appointments with whom and why. Further, emergency physicians should assist in arranging critical follow up prior to discharge as able.  Precautions regarding when to return to the ED versus waiting for any follow-up appointments should additionally be provided, as well as instructions for how to care for oneself until follow-up. These basic tenants of discharge, often described as the ‘rules of the road’ (Table 2), may serve as a basic framework for the discharge process.

Table 2: Rules of the Road for Successful Discharge

  1. Have the right diagnosis
  2. Time & Action Specific Instructions
    • What to do
    • When to do it
  3. Provider Specific
    • Who to contact
    • Why and When
    • Printed Information
    • Verbally explained
    • Verbally confirmed

In addition to the content itself, the importance of the quality and approach of its delivery cannot be overstated. The ED provider and care team members must consider the wide range in literacy, health literacy, cultural backgrounds, and access to outpatient resources when delivering the ongoing care instructions [6,7]. In many instances, EDs attempt to improve patient and family understanding of discharge instructions through standardization and simplification of written and verbal instructions. Due to literacy variability, current literature recommends instructions are written at a late elementary educational level [10]. Verbal discussions in conjunction with written instructions have been shown to be superior to written instructions alone [11]. For patients with a primary language differing from that of the clinician, use of interpreter services, when available, has been shown to improve quality of discharge communication and clinical understanding [12]. Other approaches that may benefit patient outcomes include providing supplemental written information and using visual and multimedia adjuncts to support understanding [8,9].

Essential to any successful approach is the comprehension of the patient regarding all of the information provided. After all, if the content and delivery are exceptional but the comprehension is poor, this should be seen as a discharge failure as it decreases care compliance and outcome quality.  To address this specific aspect of the discharge process, instituting a read-back or teach-back method is recommended. This method involves asking the patient to repeat back their understanding of the information imparted, which allows the physician to identify any remaining gaps in understanding and provide additional instruction as needed.

The implementation of discharge care processes frequently falls short due to unidentified social and medical factors that prevent the plan from being carried out.  Social factors could include homelessness, low income, uninsured/underinsured status, lack of transportation, or lack of primary care.  Medical factors could include concurrent psychiatric illness, substance abuse, cognitive impairment, inability to care for self, or young/advancing age. Understanding these circumstances will help identify patients at high risk for discharge complications and trigger additional resource considerations for these patients.

The discharge process provides an opportunity to ensure the patient’s condition is well understood, that no additional medical red flags need to be addressed, and that the care plan and follow-up are well understood. In an online video, Dr. Oller provides another process to engage the ‘moment of safety‘ related to discharge and outlines 5 essential steps (Table 3) for any ED discharge [13].

Table 3: ED Discharge: Moment of Safety
  1. Has the medical provider discussed the findings, diagnosis and plan of care (including medications and follow-up plan)?
  2. Confirm the discharge instructions and prescriptions match the patient identifiers
  3. Review all prescriptions and clarify any changes
  4. Review current vital signs
  5. Provide closure

Barriers to Successful Discharge

The barriers to successful discharge are myriad.  Some are intrinsic to the ED work environment and nature of emergency department patient arrival and flow.  Others relate to the challenging or often unidentified social and medical factors that prevent the plan from being completely carried out.  In a recent American College of Emergency Physician Quality Improvement and Patient Safety section meeting, Dr. Pham shared a conceptual framework for understanding the barriers to success and improving the discharge process (Figure 1) [14].

Figure 1: Barriers to Successful ED Discharge

While this framework may not be uniformly representative of all EDs, it addresses many of the operational failures that occur outside of the ED and outlines opportunities for hospitals and health systems to align for improved patient care outcomes.  And while screenings for high-risk discharges in EDs occur, the additional resources needed to ensure appropriate social work or case management care coordination are often limited.

Post-discharge follow-up processes for patients at risk for failing discharge instructions exist in some systems. This may include flagging a patient’s chart for a social work follow-up to assess and assist with the patient’s ability to obtain necessary medications, make and attend follow-up appointments, or address other concerns identified by the provider. Some physician groups routinely call patients the next day to see how the patient is doing and ensure understanding of their discharge instructions and care plan [7,8].

Types of Discharge Information Packets

Discharge instructions vary widely by practice location and resources available. However, there remain 3 primary means of providing discharge information and instruction: a basic care instruction note, a preformatted illness specific instruction sheet, and a templated software-based discharge product [8].

Commonly used, an instruction note is simply a set of instructions handwritten or typed on plain paper, without the assistance of computer programs. In settings with limited resources, this may be the only means of providing essential care information for the patient, their family, and the provider with whom they may follow-up. While uniquely tailored, they may lack substantial content for care, take time to prepare, and be limited by literacy and handwriting.

Information sheets are pre-printed education and instruction documents that describe care information related to one specific illness. They can be developed for the most common medical illnesses for each institution and have essential information regarding plans of care.  Information sheets are immediately available, inexpensive, reproducible, and can be designed to include simple language and or pictorial education.   They are not patient specific, may not provide adequate instruction in difficult or complicated cases, and require computer, printer, and copying capacity.

For settings with an integrated EHR, software products that create discharge packets (including discharge diagnoses, medications, medical care instructions and information regarding the illness, outlined care course after leaving the ED, and essential contact information for those next steps) are available.  These are highly resource dependent and therefore may not be routinely available.

Each form of written discharge materials offers its own unique benefits and drawbacks. Regardless of type utilized, physicians should exercise the basic principles outlined above in ensuring appropriate readability and quality of information provided. While specific details are helpful and important, distilling instructions into a short, high-yield sheet has been shown to be more effective than providing a large stack of superfluous [information] that patients may not entirely review [15].

Leave Against Medical Advice and Elopement

In certain circumstances, patients may request to leave prior to completion of their medical evaluation and treatment. In this situation, it is essential for the last health care professional caring for the patient to clearly document why the patient left and attest that the patient had the mental capacity to make such a decision at that time. While some electronic documentation systems have templates in place to assist with this documentation, Table 4 provides basic information for against medical advice (AMA) discharge documentation that can be used to create a uniform template [3,4,16,17].

Table 4: Documentation for Patients Leaving Against Medical Advice

Component

Description

Capacity

Establish a patient’s decision-making capacity, and clarify aspects of care which may affect capacity (i.e. patient is now clinically sober, etc.)

Risks

Specific condition-associated risks that were discussed (missed diagnosis, potential harms from untreated disease process, etc.)

Verify comprehension

Patient’s understanding of the risks

Patient’s decision

Include the patient’s decision, and any alternative plans (i.e. patient refused admission, but agreed to follow up with the primary physician tomorrow)

Signatures

Patient’s and provider’s signatures

An attempt should be made to provide the patient with appropriate discharge instructions, even in the event that a complete diagnosis may not yet be determined.  Include advice for the patient to follow up with their own physician, strict return precautions, and concerning symptoms that should prompt the patient to seek further care. In addition, it should be made clear that leaving against medical advice does not prevent the patient from returning to the emergency department for further evaluation if their symptoms worsen or if they change their mind about receiving care.  Despite a common notion to the contrary, AMA discharge does not automatically provide the emergency physician with immunity from potential medical liability [16,17]. In the event that a patient lacks decision-making capacity to adequately understand the rationale and consequences of leaving AMA and their condition places them at risk for imminent harm, involuntary hospitalization is warranted and often legally required depending on the location of practice.  In unclear circumstances and if available, a psychiatrist can assist in determining capacity, especially in the case of patients with mental health conditions.

Elopement is a similar process in which patients disappear during the care process. While it is difficult to provide discharge paperwork for these patients, documenting the actions taken to find the patient is essential (e.g. searching the ED, having security check the surrounding areas).  In addition, clinicians should attempt to reach the patient by phone to discuss their elopement and any additional care issues or concerns. Documentation of these attempts or any additional conversation is critical in mitigating legal risks [3,4].

Conclusion

Discharge instructions are a very important part of the emergency department care process and record.  It is essential to ensure each patient has a complete understanding of their instructions in order to promote care compliance and improve transitions in care. Verbal instructions remain more effective than written instructions, but both are needed and a multimodal approach to relaying information is preferable to a single modality. Be explicit, keep it simple, and have the patients repeat back instructions to ensure understanding. These simple steps will improve patient outcomes and compliance, and help clinicians avoid medical and legal pitfalls.

Authors

Dominique GELMANN

Dominique GELMANN

Dominique Gelmann is an Emergency Medicine resident at Wake Forest University. Her interests include patient-physician communication and health literacy. During medical school she completed a one-year research and leadership fellowship investigating health literacy as a social determinant of health, and helped author an institutional white paper with actionable strategies for improving health literacy education. She has given several lectures on the topic to various audiences, and developed a curriculum on health literacy and best-practice patient-provider communication principles for a free student-run health clinic. She looks forward to continuing strengthening her passion for this work throughout her career.

Bret NICKS

Bret NICKS

Bret Nicks, MD, MHA is an emergency physician that embraces the breadth of our specialty. He is a Professor and Executive Vice Chair of Emergency Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He is the past president of the North Carolina College of Emergency Medicine. He served as the Chief Medical Officer of the award-winning Wake Forest Baptist Davie Medical Center. Dr. Nicks served as the founding Associate Dean for the Wake Forest Office of Global Health. He has lived, practiced, and led in many resource austere locations globally, although calls the academic tertiary care emergency department his home. He is passionate about, consults and lectures on the interface of clinical quality, leadership and team culture – and is dedicated to developing EM leaders for the future of our specialty and the transformation of healthcare. He loves anything outdoors, enjoys blogging on various life and leadership topics; http://www.bretnicksmd.com/blog, and recently published his first book.

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Cite This Article

Please replace “iEM Education Project Team” below with the author(s) surname and initials.

Cite this article as: iEM Education Project Team, "Discharge Communications (2023)," in International Emergency Medicine Education Project, May 15, 2023, https://iem-student.org/2023/05/15/discharge-communications-2023/, date accessed: September 21, 2023

2018 version of this topichttps://iem-student.org/discharge-communications/

References

  1. Clarke C, Friedman SM, Shi K, et al. Emergency department discharge instructions comprehension and compliance study. CJEM 2005 Jan;7(1):5-11.
  2. Clark PA, Drain M, Gesell SB, et al. Patient perceptions of quality in discharge instruction. Patient Educ Couns. 2005 Oct;59(1):56-68.
  3. Henry GL, Gupta G. (2013). Medical-Legal Issues in Emergency Medicine. In Adams (Ed.), Emergency Medicine Clinical Essentials, 2nd Ed; 1759-65. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier.
  4. Siff JE. (2011). Legal Issues in Emergency Medicine. In Tintinalli’s (Ed.), Emergency Medicine, 7th Ed; 2021-31. McGraw-Hill.
  5. Crane JA. Patient comprehension of doctor-patient communication on discharge from the emergency department. J Emerg Med 1997;15:1–7
  6. Engel KG, Buckley BA, Forth VE, et al. Patient Understanding of Emergency Department Discharge Instructions: Where Are Knowledge Deficits Greatest? Acad Emerg Med 2012; 19(9):1035-1044.
  7. Sameuls-Kalow ME, et al. Unmet Needs at the Time of Emergency Department Discharge. Acad Emerg Med. 2015 Dec 18.
  8. Taylor DM, Cameron PA. Discharge instructions for emergency department patients: what should we provide? J Acad Emerg Med. 2000; 17:86-90.
  9. Zeng-Treitler Q, Kim H, Hunder M. Improving Patient Comprehension and Recall of Discharge Instructions by Supplementing Free Texts with Pictographs. AMIA Annu Sympo Proc 2008:849-853.
  10. Choudhry AJ, Baghdadi YM, et al. Readability of discharge summaries: with what level of information are we dismissing our patients? Am J Surg. 2016 Mar; 211(3): 631–636. PMID: 26794665.
  11. Al-Harthy N, Sudersanadas KM, Wagie AE, et al. Efficacy of patient discharge instructions: A pointer toward caregiver friendly communication methods from pediatric emergency personnel. J Family Community Med. 2016 Sep-Dec; 23(3): 155–160. PMID: 27625582.
  12. Gutman CK, Cousins L, Gritton J, et al. Professional interpreter use and discharge communication in the pediatric emergency department. Acad Pediatr. 2018;18(8):935–943. PMID: 30048713.
  13. Oller C. Discharge Moment of Safety. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuLjBWkfomE Accessed January 30, 2016.
  14. Pham JC, Ijagbemi M. Improving the ED Discharge Process. ACEP. Available at: http://www.acep.org/content.aspx?id=90940 Accessed January 15, 2016.
  15. DeSai C, Janowiak K, Secheli B, et al. Empowering patients: simplifying discharge instructions. BMJ Open Qual. 2021 Sep; 10(3).
  16. Levy F, Mareiniss DP, Lacovelli C. The Importance of a Proper Against-Medical-Advice (AMA) Discharge. How Signing Out AMA May Create Significant Liability Protection for Providers.  J Emerg Med. 2012;43(3):516-520.
  17. Devitt PJ, Devitt AC, Dewan M. An examination of whether discharging patients against medical advice protects physicians from malpractice charges. Psychiatr Serv. 2000;51:899-902.

Reviewed By

Arif Alper Cevik, MD, FEMAT, FIFEM

Arif Alper Cevik, MD, FEMAT, FIFEM

Prof Cevik is an Emergency Medicine academician at United Arab Emirates University, interested in international emergency medicine, emergency medicine education, medical education, point of care ultrasound and trauma. He is the founder and director of the International Emergency Medicine Education Project – iem-student.org, vice-chair of the International Federation for Emergency Medicine (IFEM) core curriculum and education committee and board member of the Asian Society for Emergency Medicine and Emirati Board of Emergency Medicine.

Special Considerations for Homeless Patients in the Emergency Department

The emergency department is often the first place that a homeless patient steps into to seek medical aid, and as such, the special considerations in the care of this particularly vulnerable patient population is an important discussion for aspiring emergency medicine physicians.

In 2017, a YaleGlobal article estimated that there were approximately 1.5 million homeless people worldwide, which made up 2% of the global population at the time. In the same report, they noted that an estimated 1.6 billion people lacked “adequate housing,” which unfortunately has no specific definition and thus varies from country to country, as well as from study to study.1

Nevertheless, it is apparent that the numbers are staggering. For an in-depth overview of the statistics relating to homeless on a global scale, Wikipedia offers a list of countries by homeless population, linked here.2 Many of these individuals do not have easy access to maintenance healthcare and end up resorting to emergency services for both acute and non-acute issues.

Numerous studies have shown that homeless patients are generally high utilizers of emergency services; according to the Center for Disease Control in the United States, there was an annual average of 42 ED visits per 100 non-homeless people between 2015-2018, compared to an average of 203 ED visits per 100 homeless persons in the same timeframe.3

So the question becomes: what are some of the special considerations that we, as emergency medical staff, should be weighing when treating homeless patients? Here are some tips:

  1. Start thinking about disposition early, and, if your facility has access to them, get social workers involved as soon as possible. Take into consideration the closing time(s) of nearby shelters, and plan accordingly.
  2. Discuss and document your patient’s social history thoroughly; this can not only help whatever further research that may be conducted but also help build better rapport with your patient. Ask whether they live in a shelter or on the street, for how long, transportation needs, etc., and be sure to document key findings.
  3. Evaluate ability to perform activities of daily living, assess the level of functional independence and ambulatory capabilities.
  4. Provide clothing, food, warm blankets, and mobility devices, when appropriate.
  5. Assess access to follow-up healthcare. Familiarize yourself with the resources available: what are the organizations in your area that might be of help? Are there non-profits that work explicitly with the homeless population?
  6. Discuss any potential substance abuse and attempt counseling.*

* In the United States, consider obtaining an x-waiver, which would allow you to prescribe buprenorphine. For more information about the significance of the x-waiver and information on how to obtain one online for free, click here.

  1. Prepare discharge papers with clear, easy-to-understand instructions for follow-up and care. Avoid medical jargon and use comprehensible language; one recommendation suggests keeping language to a fifth-grader level.

Areas of improvement:

Each institution that deals with homeless patients will likely have its own protocols in place for its management. It is helpful to get acquainted with these protocols and to look around your emergency department to see if there is any room for improvement.

Below are some of the interventions which were undertaken, many of which ultimately showed a reduction in re-presentation and ED utilization, and could lead to an increase in patient satisfaction.

  • transition of care: a review examining the effect of various interventions in discharging homeless patients found that all three studied categories (those being case management, individualized care plans, and information sharing) had a modest impact, with varying degrees of success based on different studies.4
  • dedicated homeless clinics: a single-center study in 2020 found that a dedicated homeless clinic initiative reduced ED disposition failures and inappropriate ED visits, defined as seeking care for non-emergent conditions.5
  • transportation considerations: while some hospitals are able to subsidize travel costs (taxi vouchers, shuttle service, etc.), that might not be possible at all institutions, so alternatives should be considered.

[A 2012 community-based participatory research approach was undertaken to understand how homeless patients (n = 98) reflected on their care. Of the patients surveyed, 42% mentioned that there had been no discussion of transportation, while 11% noted that they had slept on the street the night after discharge.6 This goes to show how important it is to discuss disposition early and thoroughly.]

  • adding social determinants into electronic medical record-keeping systems: a paper reflected on the changes, such as adding fields for social determinants to the electronic health record (EHR) system, that were undertaken in Hawaii, USA.7 Some institutions tag their homeless patients in a certain way, but making changes at the EHR level could help integrate social needs into clinical care across multiple providers.

References and Further Reading

  1. Chamie J. As Cities Grow Worldwide, So Do the Numbers of Homeless. YaleGlobal Online. https://truthout.org/articles/as-cities-grow-worldwide-so-do-the-numbers-of-homeless/. Published 2017. Accessed June 8, 2021.
  2. Wikipedia. List of countries by homeless population. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeless_population#cite_note-1. Accessed June 8, 2021.
  3. QuickStats: Rate of Emergency Department (ED) Visits, by Homeless Status and Geographic Region — National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6950a8.htm. Published 2020. Accessed June 8, 2021.
  4. Soril LJJ, Leggett LE, Lorenzetti DL, Noseworthy TW, Clement FM. Reducing frequent visits to the emergency department:A systematic review of interventions. PLoS One. 2015;10(4):1-18. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0123660
  5. Holmes CT, Holmes KA, MacDonald A, et al. Dedicated homeless clinics reduce inappropriate emergency department utilization. J Am Coll Emerg Physicians Open. 2020;1(5):829-836. doi:10.1002/emp2.12054
  6. Greysen SR, Allen R, Lucas GI, Wang EA, Rosenthal MS. Understanding transitions in care from hospital to homeless shelter: A mixed-methods, community-based participatory approach. J Gen Intern Med. 2012;27(11):1484-1491. doi:10.1007/s11606-012-2117-2
  7. Trinacty CM, LaWall E, Ashton M, Taira D, Seto TB, Sentell T. Adding Social Determinants in the Electronic Health Record in Clinical Care in Hawai’i: Supporting Community-Clinical Linkages in Patient Care. Hawaii J Med Public Health. 2019;78(6 Suppl 1):46-51. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31285969http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=PMC6603884.
Cite this article as: Helena Halasz, Hungary, "Special Considerations for Homeless Patients in the Emergency Department," in International Emergency Medicine Education Project, July 5, 2021, https://iem-student.org/2021/07/05/special-considerations-for-homeless-patients-in-the-emergency-department/, date accessed: September 21, 2023

Healthcare: A back up industry

Healthcare: A back up industry

Examples of system failure are littered around the medical field and often disguised as professionalism or better yet heroism. “One resource seems infinite and free: the professionalism of caregivers”, says an opinion piece published in The New York Times. The article goes on to say that an overwhelming majority of health care professionals do the right thing for their patients, even at a high personal cost. Noteworthy is the availability heuristic that comes into play. “Of course they should work in favor of their patients, no matter what, isn’t that why they chose the medical profession!?”, you ask. They sure did. A lot of why you believe that medical professionals must go out of their way to help patients can be explained by what news you are being exposed to these days. The availability heuristic! That kept aside the gist of the article can roughly be summed up in the following excerpt

“Counting on nurses and doctors to suck it up because you know they won’t walk away from their patients is not just a bad strategy. It’s bad medicine. This status quo is not sustainable — not for medical professionals and not for our patients.”

I invite you to, for some minutes, drop all the preoccupation and think about it logically. I have, time and again, submitted myself to the idea that empathy and not logic is the best way to get my point across. But today, let us first think about some pertinent analogies.

As we anticipate the dreaded tsunami of COVID-19, many governmental healthcare institutes are sending out a notice for recruiting doctors and nurses for a certain time. My sister who is a nurse said, “Why do they have to make it sound like we are disposable?”. To which, I wittingly replied, “ Well they are probably looking for paid volunteers.” But the same recurring theme covers the core of our conversation. We simply were treating healthcare as a per-need industry. When the reality is, again, a contrasting opposite. Indeed, healthcare is a backup industry. You do not wish to use it when things are going smoothly. The healthcare system of any country should stand on its mighty ability to deal with crises.

Most other industries can either do with the number of people already in the industry or have to let go of people they already had, during a disaster. That is a contrasting opposite to the healthcare industry. Every time the health of the public is threatened we start to search for volunteers and temporary hires. I argue this is because the healthcare industry is ruled by businesses in the most powerful countries. To the point that the notion of just enough or even fewer doctors working in a setting is looked upon as a heroic measure. I don’t suppose you would say. “Oh! That busy bank has only one teller, and she also works as a receptionist. How heroic of her!”, do you?

There are reserves in almost every industry. Take transportation as another example: I visited Kathmandu on a night bus during my vacation as a child. My dad introduced me to two men. Both of them were drivers. I was taken by surprise when I found out the bus only had one steering wheel. “What would the other driver do!?”, the inquisitive child in me asked. My dad was semi-asleep when he answered, “They will drive for the whole night. Don’t you think they need to rest?”. I sure do Dad, I sure do!

In aviation, the first officer (FO) is the second pilot (also referred to as the co-pilot) of an aircraft. The first officer is second-in-command of the aircraft to the captain, who is the legal commander. In the event of incapacitation of the captain, the first officer will assume command of the aircraft. A second officer is usually the third in the line of command for a flight crew on a civil aircraft. Usually, a second officer is used on international or long haul flights where more than two crews are required to allow for adequate crew rest periods.

There have been some examples of what would be analogous to a natural disaster in other industries. Let us take some economic ups and downs as examples. Remember, India demonetized Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 notes? Bankers had to work extra hours to make sure the undertaking completed in due time. They, of course, were paid an extra allowance for that. Interestingly they did not have to open up more positions for the work to be carried out. Remember the great economic recession? It “forced” business owners to let go of their employees. Not recruit more!

I vividly remember feeling proud of one of my seniors who was portrayed as an ideal healthcare worker. “He was arranging the medicine cabinet when we visited him”, one of my professors boasted. I felt not only proud but a desire to be at his place and do as he did one day. Today I understand that 1) he could be doing something way more productive and 2) what my senior was doing when my professor reached there was a clear example of a system failure.

Let me give you an example of my intern year to demonstrate the lack of consideration of the human element in designing healthcare systems. I had to take leave for some days. It was the flu. I understand that the coronavirus situation has alchemized the glory that flu deserved all along, but those were different times. I had a severe sore throat and my body ached like some virus was gnawing on my bones. I remember feeling very guilty about being ill because while I was sniffing Vicks and popping paracetamols in the hostel. My friends (fellow interns) were working their asses off. But when the system was designed, did no one think that someone might get sick? I mean, we work around infections every day. C’mon system designers, that is blindness, not just shortsightedness. The irony is: we are in an industry where we boast about our ability to empathize with human pain, suffering, and ill-health.

Human development has been punctuated by disasters of some sort, time and again. It is almost comical that we haven’t learned our lessons and that harrowing circumstances have to keep reminding us of the need for preparedness. It almost feels like I am writing a reminder the second time. After I failed to follow through my previous reminder. For me, the first time was the Nepal earthquake 2015. I am sure you have your own first time. I can only speak of the healthcare industry because that is what I have been fortunate enough to see closely. I am sure preparedness means different things in different settings. For healthcare, it means 1) taking into account the human element and 2) realizing that healthcare is a backup industry.

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The Unspoken Damage of COVID-19 on Spanish-Speaking Patients

The Unspoken Damage of COVID-19 on Spanish-Speaking Patients

The COVID-19 pandemic has uncovered some ugly truths about the American healthcare system. One of the ugliest is discrimination against non-English-speaking patients. This form of discrimination particularly affects native Spanish-speaking only patients (defined in this article as “Spanish-speaking patients), who comprise not only a large proportion of America’s hospital patronage but also a majority of those suffering from COVID-19.

In May 2020, as part of my Emergency Medicine residency training, I worked at a small community hospital in northern Virginia, located in an agricultural area with a large number of Central American and Mexican migrant workers. The first few days of the rotation were relatively unremarkable until the COVID-19 cases began to pour in. Most of those suffering from severe COVID-19 were Spanish-speaking patients employed at a local plant nursery where an outbreak was occurring.

I intubated a COVID-19 patient almost every day I worked there. I speak Spanish fluently, and since I was able to communicate with Spanish-speaking patients and their families, I was able to obtain consent for the procedure. I will never forget one patient who had tears rolling down his face shortly after intubation as we titrated his post-intubation sedation medications. I spoke with his son over the phone, in Spanish, who thanked me profusely and cried, worried he would never see his father alive again. He asked if he could visit his father in the hospital. He cried more when I explained the no visitor policy for hospitalized COVID-19 patients. He still thanked me.

The ER staff also thanked me, because until I arrived, few in-person Spanish interpreters or fluent Spanish-speaking providers worked there. Therefore Spanish-speaking patients consented to intubations using a phone-based interpretation service. Though The Joint Commission states that telephone or video interpretation is sufficient to obtain informed consent (especially during the COVID-19 pandemic), in-person interpretation has proved superior. Unfortunately, at this small hospital, out of necessity and due to inundation by COVID-19 victims, Spanish-speaking patients had occasionally been intubated without true informed consent. For example, I remember a case when the overwhelmed nursing staff struggled to connect to and understand the phone-based interpreter while donning PPE and equipping a Spanish-speaking patient’s room for emergent intubation, only to be followed shortly thereafter by another critical COVID-19 patient.

Despite the large number of Spanish-speaking patients receiving care in the United States, a 2016 survey of 4,586 American hospitals showed that only 56 percent offered some sort of linguistic and translation services. As a former volunteer Spanish interpreter for a university hospital, the cost is cited as the primary reason, among many. Discrimination against undocumented people and xenophobia are unstated reasons. I remember distinctly a Grand Rounds presentation about native Spanish-speaking patients in hospitals and how a Latinx pediatrician emotionally expressed how often she witnessed Spanish-speaking families receive worse care than their English-speaking counterparts. Indeed, inadequate or inaccurate interpretation has resulted in serious legal, financial, and patient safety repercussions for hospitals.

In June, I worked in the COVID-19 ICU at my residency program’s hospital. Most of the COVID-19 ICU patients had been transferred from the same small hospital where I worked the previous May. After rounds, most of my afternoon was spent contacting Spanish-speaking family members and updating them on their loved one’s condition. It was heartbreaking to tell these families that they could not visit their loved ones in the hospital. Undoubtedly, the family is incredibly important to all cultures, and particularly to central and Mexican-Americans. Sadly, these strong family ties underscore an important reason Latinx people have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19: many live in large, multigenerational family homes, accelerating virus exposure and transmission. Furthermore, many are undocumented and work under substandard conditions, with few or no COVID-19 precautions. They may also be underinsured or have no insurance or benefits like sick leave, further fueling the virus’ devastation.

When you pull the bandage off a gangrenous wound to expose the decaying flesh below, you have two options: put the bandage back on and let someone else deal with it, or clean the wound and treat it so it can heal. The COVID-19 pandemic has pulled the bandage off and exposed certain disgusting realities of our health care system – how can we as Emergency Physicians heal this wound?

We must recognize that hospital under-investment in adequate Spanish interpreters is a form of racism. Medical Spanish should be required curriculum for medical students and residents. The knowledge of basic conversational Spanish goes a long way when communicating with patients and their families. Medical Spanish is not difficult, and there are enough cognates and Latin derivatives that most people, with minimal practice, can get through history and physical in Spanish. Most importantly, hospitals should invest in full-time in-person Spanish interpreters, at the very least for the Emergency Department.

The COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged our healthcare system in myriad ways. With destruction comes the opportunity to rebuild and improve. This is one area that needs it.

Cite this article as: Sarah Bridge, USA, "The Unspoken Damage of COVID-19 on Spanish-Speaking Patients," in International Emergency Medicine Education Project, January 11, 2021, https://iem-student.org/2021/01/11/covid-19-on-spanish-speaking-patients/, date accessed: September 21, 2023

Expert Opinion: Luis Vargas – ED Overcrowding

EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT OVERCROWDING

Dear students, emergency departments are suffering overcrowding since long time. There are various causes of this situation as well as solutions. It is better to know about ED overcrowding before your first shift. Dr. Luis Vargas from Colombia summarizes his lecture presented in 30th Emergency Medicine Congress of Mexican Society in Cancun.

ED Overcrowding - English

Manejo y consecuencias del sobrecupo en urgencias

Cite this article as: iEM Education Project Team, "Expert Opinion: Luis Vargas – ED Overcrowding," in International Emergency Medicine Education Project, March 29, 2019, https://iem-student.org/2019/03/29/expert-opinion-luis-vargas-ed-overcrowding/, date accessed: September 21, 2023

Against Medical Advice and Elopement

In certain circumstances, patients may request to leave prior to completion of their medical evaluation and treatment. In this situation, it is essential for the last health care professional caring for the patient to document clearly why the patient left and attested that the patient had the mental capacity to make such a decision at that time (Henry, 2013). While some electronic documentation systems have templates in place to assist with this documentation, Table 2 provides basic information for against medical advice (AMA) discharge documentation that can be used to create a uniform template (Henry, 2013; Siff, 2011; Levy, 2012; Devitt, 2000).

What to do?

Interventions in the ED Discharge Process

DomainIntervention
ContentStandardize approach
DeliveryVerbal instructions (language and culture appropriate)
Written instructions (literary levels)
Basic Instructions (including return precautions)
Media, visual cues or adjuncts
ComprehensionConfirm comprehension (teach-back method)
ImplementationResource connections (Rx, appointment, durable medical supplies, follow-up)
Medication review

An attempt should be made to provide the patient with appropriate discharge instructions, even if a complete diagnosis may not yet be determined. Include advice for the patient to follow up with his physician, strict return precautions, and concerning symptoms that should prompt the patient to seek further care. It should also be made clear that leaving against medical advice does not prevent the patient from returning to the emergency department for further evaluation if his symptoms worsen, or if he changes his mind. Despite a common notion to the contrary, simply leaving against medical advice does not automatically imply that physicians are immune to potential medical liability (Levy, 2012; Devitt, 2000). If a patient lacks decision-making capacity to be able to adequately understand the rationale and consequences of leaving AMA and his condition places him at risk for imminent harm, involuntary hospitalization is warranted. In unclear circumstances and if available, psychiatry can assist in determining capacity, especially in the case of patients with mental health conditions.

Elopement is a similar process where patients disappear during the care process. While it is difficult to provide discharge paperwork for these patients, documenting the actions taken to find the patient is essential (e.g., searching the ED, having security check the surrounding areas). In addition, attempt to reach the patient by phone to discuss his elopement and any additional care issues or concerns. Documentation of these attempts or any additional conversation is very important (Henry, 2013; Siff, 2011).

To Know More About It?

References

  • Brooten J, Nicks B. Discharge Communications. In: Cevik AA, Quek LS, Noureldin A, Cakal ED (eds) iEmergency Medicine for Medical Students and Interns – 2018. Retrieved February 27, 2019, from https://iem-student.org/discharge-communications/
  • Henry GL, Gupta G. (2013). Medical-Legal Issues in Emergency Medicine. In Adams (Ed.), Emergency Medicine Clinical Essentials, 2nd Ed; 1759-65. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier.
  • Siff JE. (2011). Legal Issues in Emergency Medicine. In Tintinalli’s (Ed.), Emergency Medicine, 7th Ed; 2021-31. McGraw-Hill.
  • Levy F, Mareiniss DP, Lacovelli C. The Importance of a Proper Against-Medical-Advice (AMA) Discharge. How Signing Out AMA May Create Significant Liability Protection for Providers. J Emerg Med. 2012;43(3):516-520.
  • Devitt PJ, Devitt AC, Dewan M. An examination of whether discharging patients against medical advice protects physicians from malpractice charges. Psychiatr Serv. 2000;51:899-902.