Discharge communication: do parents hear what we say?

Every day we send home children from our wards and emergency departments (EDs), with specific instructions to the parents about medication, follow-up and what symptoms to look out for. How much do they remember and then act on correctly? In many cases not much, according to a systematic review written by authors from New York (Glick A et al. Pediatrics 2017. doi: 10.1542/peds.2016-4165). They scoured the literature for studies that examined parental knowledge and/or actual execution of instructions after discharge from children’s wards or EDs, but not neonatal units. They found 64 studies, most from North America (and interestingly none from the UK), conducted between 1985 and 2016. Most were observational rather than interventional, and only 16 were randomised controlled trials. ED studies predominated (48/64). A disproportionate number involved asthma.

They collated their findings under various domains, although most studies did not address all of these. Regarding medication (28...

from Archives of Disease in Childhood current issue http://ift.tt/2AhjJpz