Discharge Planning on Healthcare Outcomes of Elderly w/ Heart Failure (Essay Sample)

Effects of a Discharge Planning on the Healthcare Outcomes of Elderly Patient with Heart Failure
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Abstract
Background: Often, the nurses and other healthcare workers interact with different patients with diverse condition in healthcare settings. In the current care setting, elderly patients with heart failure have experienced an effective discharge plan. Hence, there is a need to fill the gap by developing strategies that ensure an improvement in discharge panning for adult patients with heart failures.
Objective: the objective of the report is to analyze the effectiveness of developing and implementing optimized discharge planning in improving the healthcare outcomes of elderly patients with heart failures.
Methods: In the report, both qualitative and qualitative approaches were used in understanding the impact of effective discharge planning in promoting the healthcare outcomes of elderly patients with heart failures. Quantitative data collection entailed collecting numerical data from elderly patients with heart failures, while qualitative method entailed comparing the results of applying a discharge planning and a failure to apply it.
Results: from the instances studied and analyzed, it was evident that discharge planning is essential in improving the general health care outcomes of elderly patients with heart failure. The overall patient satisfaction was also found to be improved.
Conclusion: Establishment and application of clinically effective discharge planning help improve the general healthcare outcomes of elderly patients with heart failure.
Relevance: when there is a need to improve palliative care provision and the general healthcare outcomes among the elderly patients, the recommendation of the report may be used to support the need to formulate and implement discharge planning.
Keywords: Discharge planning, heart failure, elderly patients and patient outcomes.
Effects of a Discharge Plan on the Healthcare Outcomes of Elderly Patient with Heart Failure
Introduction
Purpose
Formulation of a discharge plan intended to improve the healthcare conditions of elderly patients with heart failure problems is necessary for the current clinical setting. This could have potential improvement not only on the level of satisfaction of the patients but also on the professional competency skills of the nurses and other healthcare providers. A research done by Hestevik et al. (2019) exposed the need to have proper discharge planning to improve the quality of lives among elderly patients as it helps them in coping and adapting well to life. A failure to have it reduces the quality of care services provided and decreases patient safety. Nurses and other healthcare practitioners, including physicians, can develop a strategic initiative to build a discharge plan that will improve the quality of care provided among elderly patients. Since nurses primarily interact with elderly patients with heart failures during discharging, they should be the centerpiece of the whole program. The stakeholders in this case range from the advanced practice nurses, the elderly patients with heart failures and their families, doctors, nurse managers, and supportive staff members. The integrative reviews also go further to ensure the scope of knowledge about handling patients with heart failure is widened. Collaboration among the relevant stakeholders will provide a long-lasting solution to these adversities.
Articulate
In any organizational setting, strategic planning is quite profiting. Notably, strategic planning can be designed to solve a particular recurrent concern concerning the healthcare setting. This, however, requires collaboration and teamwork from the relevant stakeholders.
No matter the industry, teamwork is an essential skill. Such planning can narrow down and address discharge planning among elderly patients with heart failure. However, considering the present clinical situation, most the healthcare organizations do not have effective discharge planning to cater to the healthcare wellbeing of elderly patients with heart failures. Considering elderly patients with heart failure, does discharge planning optimization help improve their healthcare outcomes?
Variables
In every healthcare setting, nurses play an essential role in interacting with patients at all levels. In research by Institute of Medicine (US), about 40 % of nurses interact with elderly patients often up to 45 % visits in U.S.A. Hence, the study will limit its focus to nurses and physicians who spend their time interacting with elderly patients. Such demographic information about the nurses, like their experience in ages, level of education, gender, and race, will be considered to evaluate how effective they can contribute to effective discharge planning. Patients will be purely elderly, and they will involve those aged 65 years and above diagnosed with chronic heart failures.
Discharge planning is undoubtedly beneficial considering. In the United States, a lack of adequate and appropriate discharge planning or a delay in its application largely contributes to elderly mortality, depression and reduction in the mobility of patients (Rojas-García et al. et al., 2018). While the nurses and other healthcare practitioners, including physicians, are trained to ensure patient-centered care services, there is still a need to realize positive patient outcomes among elderly patients with heart failures by improving discharge planning. Different nursing education programs equip nurses with relevant knowledge, which helps them demonstrate professional competency skills while in their duties. This includes effective communication with patients and mastery of inter-professional competency skills like role clarification. However, such programs, as examined by Kwame Petrucka (2020) do not specifically equip the nurses with the kind of knowledge needed while interacting with specific groups of patients who need urgent and unique kinds of care like the elderly patients who have heart failures. To help address this concern, such nurses should hence be offered formal educational programs to equip them with remarkable knowledge in handling such exceptional cases. They should further be equipped with practical nurse-patient communication skills to provide feedback and identify any occurring challenges in the elderly while receiving treatment faster.
An evaluative approach will be followed to determine how well an optimized discharge plan can help improve the healthcare outcome of elderly patients with heart failure. The participants will include the nurses and the elderly patients with heart failures. In the study, the primary option will be to provide an educational program to the nurses to equip them with knowledge of establishing discharge planning. Prior to the beginning of this step, there will be a survey to identify the levels of engagement of the nurses with the patients. The nurses who spend most of their time engaging with elderly patients will be considered in the study. They will then be trained on how to plan and execute an effective discharge plan for elderly patients with heart failures. The training program will only take three months, and after that, they will have the required knowledge about the specific areas they will have to consider while coming up with an optimized discharge plan. The nurses will be gotten from three different healthcare organizations.
Hence, the study will aim to develop a plan that will identify the needs of elderly patients and respond to them after leaving the healthcare center. Once the nurses know the requirements of the elderly patients while they have been discharged, a sample of elderly patients with heart failure will be used in executing the developed discharge planning. The developed discharge planning will be the same for the three hospitals. The plan will include their personal needs, the care services, the level of support the nurses will have to provide, and the intervention by family members. A sample of 45 patents, 15 from each hospital, will be used. The plan will be domiciled for eight months and the changes in the patients' conditions will be recorded regularly by the nurses. Fifteen patients, five from each hospital, will act as control group, and hence, they will not receive the treatment, which is a discharge plan. The outcomes of the two groups will be recorded and compared for analysis after the elapse of 8 months.
Background and Significance
The study aims to find mutually beneficial solutions to the problem of discharging elderly patients with heart failure. On the other hand, evidence-based practices are practically applicable in clinical practice research findings. The topical research promotes evidence-based practices by ensuring patient-centered care services based on innovative and highly effective clinical practices. To improve quality of life through an efficient discharge plan, new methodologies are used in providing client center care practices to the elderly population. The literature review on the topic is practically necessary because it aids in gaining knowledge about client-catered care services and proper discharge planning in managing hospital readmissions.
In the study, some mechanisms are meant to monitor the progress of the application of the discharge planning. There will be coordination and communication that will be based on evidence-based practices in the process. Various tools will be used in the discharge planning and they will inclu...