title: A Systematic Review of the Liaison Nurse Role on Patient's Outcomes after Intensive Care Unit Discharge.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  This review focuses on the impact of liaison nurse in nursing care of patient after ICU discharge on patient's outcomes, compared with patients that are not taken care of by liaison nurses. The role of the ICU liaison nurse has transpired to solve the gap between intensive care unit and wards. Therefore, we aimed to review the outcomes of all studies in this field.
  
  
  METHODS
  A systematic review of intervention studies between 2004 and 2013 was undertaken using standard and sensitive keywords such as liaison nurse, intensive care unit, and patient outcomes in the following databases: Science direct, PubMed, Scopus, Ovid, Oxford, Wiley, Scholar, and Mosby. Then, the articles which had the inclusion criteria after quality control were selected for a systematic review.
  
  
  RESULTS
  From 662 retrieved articles, six articles were analyzed in a case study and four articles showed a statistically significant effect of the liaison nurse on the patient's outcomes such as reducing delays in patient discharge, effective discharge planning, improvement in survival for patients at the risk for readmission.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Liaison nurses have a positive role on the outcomes of patients who are discharged from the ICU and more research should be done to examine the exact function of liaison nurses and other factors that influence outcomes in patients discharged from ICU.
authors.affiliation: Behavioral Sciences Research Center, School of Nursing, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Zeinab
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Tabanejad
authors.affiliation: Behavioral Sciences Research Center, School of Nursing, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Marzieh
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pazokian
authors.affiliation: Behavioral Sciences Research Center, School of Nursing, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Abbas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ebadi
keywords: Intensive Care Unit; Liaison Nurse; Outcome; Patient; Systematic Review