Background and purpose: The needs for the post-discharge care increases in tandem with the rapid growth of the ageing population. Discharge planning, as part of continuity of care, is parallel with nursing care. The nurses play the key role in the discharge planning process. Their understanding and attitudes towards discharge planning are likely to affect the practice and the effectiveness of discharge planning. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the nurses¡¦ understanding of the discharge planning process and their attitudes towards it.
Methods: The self- administrated questionnaires were delivered to all the nurses working in a general care units in the medical center in southern Taiwan. 332 nurses were approached. The data were analyzed by SPSS 12.0 applying descriptive statistics, ANOVA, chi-square test and Pearson correlation analysis. The reliability of the questionnaire is 0.882.
Results: The net response rate is 69.9 percent. About 43 percent of the respondents are with the employment length over 10 years. 43 percent of the respondents had received discharge planning education. Only 10.7 percent of respondents got involved in the discharge planning meetings frequently. The mean value of the understanding between the respondents with the discharge planning training and those without were significantly different (p < 0.001). The significant difference was found in the understanding among the respondents with the different level of involvement in the discharge planning meetings (p< 0.001). There was a significant difference found in the mean value of attitudes among the respondents with different frequency of involvement in the discharge planning meetings. The mean scores of the whole attitudes were significantly higher in the respondents with training than in those without training (p=0.014). Understanding was associated with duration of employment, the discharge planning training or education, and level of involvement in the discharge planning meetings. Attitudes were associated with the level of involvement in the discharge planning meetings and workload. The strong correlation was found between the respondents¡¦ understanding and attitudes.
Conclusion: Understanding of the discharge planning process and the attitudes towards discharge planning were influenced by the duration of employment, the involvement in the discharge planning meetings and the education or training regarding discharge planning. Therefore, to increase the understanding and to change the attitudes, the nurses should be provided with the more discharge planning education and opportunities to participate in the discharge planning meetings.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0128108-144643 |
| Date | 28 January 2008 |
| Creators | Hsiao, Mei-yueh |
| Contributors | Wu Jen-Her, Li Ying-Chun, Chia Yuan-Yi |
| Publisher | NSYSU |
| Source Sets | NSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0128108-144643 |
| Rights | not_available, Copyright information available at source archive |
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