Towards the development of a paediatric discharge planning screening tool.

Abstract

This study reports the second phase in the development of a paediatric discharge risk screening tool. It describes evaluation of the reliability and validity of this tool, which is designed to identify children in need of post-discharge care beyond that of routine nursing and physician teaching and follow-up. The first group identified was children who possessed a non-routine or unpredictable pathway of post-hospital treatment. The second group encompassed those with multifaceted, complex post-hospital care needs, requiring extensive internal hospital department coordination and involvement of community-based care providers in the discharge planning process. It was found that discharge risk ..