Improving patient activation with a tailored nursing discharge teaching intervention for multimorbid inpatients: A quasi-experimental study

Objective: Preliminary effectiveness test of a novel structured personalized discharge teaching intervention for multimorbid inpatients. Methods: Using a 2-group sequential pre/post-intervention design, the sample comprised 68 pre-intervention control group and 70 post-intervention group participants. The discharge teaching intervention by trained clinical nurses used structured tools to engage patients and individualize discharge teaching. Outcomes measures included Patient Activation Measure, Readiness for Hospital Discharge Scale, Discharge Care Experiences Survey, and readmission with 10 days post-discharge. Results: The intervention had a statistically significant positive effect on improving patient activation (M=4.8; p = 0.05) from admission to post-discharge. The participation subscale of the Discharge Care Experiences Survey was higher in the intervention (M=4.1, SD=0.7) than the control group (M=3.8, SD=0.7; t (127)=-2.79, p = .01, effect size= .34). There were no significant between-group differences in Readiness for Hospital Discharge Scale and readmission. Conclusions: Our results suggest that a structured personalized discharge teaching intervention can improve patient activation and participation in discharge care. Further refinement of the intervention is needed to evaluate and improve specific components of the intervention. Practice Implications: Structured personalized discharge teaching should include patient engagement strategies in the teaching-learning process.