Improving Patient Discharge Communication

What is it about?

Transitional care communication events—such as discharge from hospital—are complex and dynamic: impromptu questions are asked and answered, documents are discussed and signed, and health-care professionals and patients with different knowledge must work together to establish understanding. This article examines a set of patient discharge instructions that bear substantial traces of impromptu conversation in the patient discharge communication process and argues that we need to do more to account for such exchanges as a part of the complex information our documentation must coordinate and make accessible for end users.

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Why is it important?

This essay builds on existing usability and communication design scholarship by advocating for design approaches that recognize the value of improvisation and impromptu exchanges and the modifications to standardized forms that often results from these--even or perhaps especially when the stakes are high, as they so often are in health and medicine. To do this, the article proposes an approach to designing critical process documentation that combines universal design and speculative usability modifications to improve transitional care communication practices.