Journal of hospital medicine : an official publication of the Society of Hospital Medicine
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Improving the discharge process by embedding a discharge facilitator in a resident team.
Hospital discharges are vulnerable periods for patient safety, especially in teaching hospitals where discharges are done by residents with competing demands. We sought to assess whether embedding a nurse practitioner on a medical team to help physicians with the discharge process would improve communication, patient follow-up, and hospital reutilization. ⋯ Helping resident physicians with the discharge process improves many aspects of discharge communication and patient follow-up, and saves residents' time, but had no effect on hospital reutilization for a general medicine population.