Your experiences of hospital discharge July 2023
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Healthwatch Sunderland undertook a survey with South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust Hospital to gather people’s experiences of being discharged from Sunderland Royal Hospital. They heard from 227 people.
Overall, 23% of survey respondents rated the planning and co-ordination of discharge from hospital as very good. 23% rated it as very poor.
Nearly half of individuals felt involved in decision made with regards to their discharge. 42% did not. 43% of survey respondents didn’t feel informed about the care plan put into place to support them after discharge. Many comments received also related to follow up care respondents receive, with many commenting that they felt the support put into place wasn’t satisfactory.
Just under half of respondents (48%) stated that they hadn’t received a contact number to call if they had any concerns following their discharge and 46% had. Your stay in the Discharge Lounge •
Just under half were extremely happy or very happy with the levels of care they received in the Discharge Lounge and 47% spent less than an hour in the lounge before being transported home or onto another care facility.
Just over half of survey respondents had a discussion with a staff member about their medication. 57% of individuals had been given the chance to ask question regarding their medication and 29% had not.
52% of people’s discharge had not been delayed due to the time taken to receive their medication, compared with 23%, whose discharge had been delayed.
47% of people had received some form of follow up care, following their discharge from hospital. 45% didn’t receive any follow up care and of these 66% believed that it was needed.
Of 227 respondents, 15% (36 individuals) were readmitted to hospital within 7 days, 86% of whom believed this was because they were discharged from hospital too early.