title: Improving communication with primary care to ensure patient safety post-hospital discharge.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Successful communication between hospitals and primary care is of paramount importance to enable continuity of care and maintain patient safety post-discharge. Discharge summaries are the simplest way for GPs to obtain information about a patient's hospital stay. A quality improvement study was conducted with the aim of increasing the content of discharge summaries for inpatients in the authors' department.
  
  
  METHODS
  A prospective review of 60 electronic discharge summaries was conducted over a 6-week period. The content of discharge summaries was reviewed in accordance with local trust guidelines. Targeted, intensive, cost and time-effective educational interventions were then conducted. A post-intervention review of 60 discharge summaries was performed. A further review of 60 discharge summaries was performed after 12 months.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Initial results pre-intervention confirmed suboptimal content of discharge summaries. Post-intervention results showed each component of discharge summaries improved in terms of content, with six of eight components having a statistically significant (P<0.05) increase. This was maintained after 12 months.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study has demonstrated how simple, intensive educational sessions can lead to an improvement in discharge summaries and communication with primary care.
authors.affiliation: Specialist Registrar in Trauma and Orthopaedics,, Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, Nottingham NG7 2UH.
authors.forename: Faiz S
authors.initials: FS
authors.lastname: Shivji
authors.forename: Darryl N
authors.initials: DN
authors.lastname: Ramoutar
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bailey
authors.forename: James B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Hunter
mesh_terms: D003142:Communication; D006801:Humans; D009985:Orthopedics; D010351:Patient Discharge; D063886:Patient Discharge Summaries / Q000592:standards*; D011320:Primary Health Care; D011446:Prospective Studies; D058996:Quality Improvement