Discharge Lounge

I have never heard of a discharge lounge... this should be interesting to learn about!

Annie

The usage of our discharge lounge depends on the tech working that shift (I'm a tech). It could be filled up or it could be empty. When it starts getting full, many patients don't like it because it's kind of congested. It'd be nicer if it were larger and had more TVs. If anything crazy happens, we have enough staff nearby to act promptly.

I worked at a hospital that had one but it is no longer in use. I do know it was staffed with a nurse, other than that I have no idea how it worked. Being ICU most of our patients went to the floor, or other facilities.

I've never heard of it either. So pts would physically be moved out of their room & placed in a common area with other pts waiting to leave? My concern would probably be the fact that now I have an open room for an admission, but I'm still responsible for that dc pt until they've signed their paperwork & are out the door. So I start the day with 5 pts, 3 get dc orders & move into the lounge & I get 3 new post-ops? No thanks.

I used to use one in the UK and generally it worked well.

The discharge lounge was open Mon-Fri 8.30-4.30 and all patients that used it had to be relatively self sufficient ie not a dementia patient that needed someone to stay with them or needed constant supervision. Was staffed by 2 RN's and they could also remove iv access if still in and make sure all prescriptions was ready and on the unit and available when patient was discharged. Any education re meds was usually reiterated t this time to make sure everything was understood.

If used properly the lounge can actually make a good addition to the hospital and maybe free up time on the units for admissions, education and dare I say it.... breaks :)

My hospital does not have one and I had never heard of it until I was admitted at a hospital that had one. I thought it was fabulous. It was a way more efficient system than what I had experienced at other hospitals I had been admitted to. My family member picked me up and was instructed to leave his car with valet and meet me in my room. My nurse did discharge teaching with both of us, then gave my father a card to give to valet and he was sent back to the main entrance. Volunteers wheeled me to the discharge lounge. At valet my father presented the card, where his car was retrieved for free and he was directed to the discharge lot, which was directly adjacent to the discharge lounge. The discharge lounge had air conditioning and a water cooler and some magazines and a TV playing news. Another TV showed CCTV of the entrance to the discharge lot, so patients could point out when their ride was there. There was literally sliding glass doors that the car or van could pull right up to and you were right in the vehicle. As far as I could tell, it was staffed entirely with volunteers. I would imagine if an emergency occurred they would call a rapid. I don't know how they would handle people waiting there for longer periods.

I've never heard of a discharge lounge before, but it sounds like a good idea.

I would imagine the primary nurse would do the discharge teaching and paperwork, then the patient would be taken to the lounge until their someone came to pick them up.

It could free up a lot of bed space for patients who may be waiting a while for their ride to show up. The wait can be pretty long if the hospital is in a rural area or the patient didn't tell their ride that they were being discharged that day.

My hospital has half of a discharge lounge. The hospital has been pushing to admit ed patients faster which means discharging patients faster. They gave us goals and I guess we weren't meeting those goals due to certain factors that were beyond our control. The hospital then decided to use the out patient infusion rooms [where people come to get blood transfusions, chemo, phlebotomy etc] as a "holding" area for patients until they get a ride or can go to another facility.

I don't know how it works safety wise, I am not sure who staffs it and how long people stay down there, but I do know it has drastically improved the ed wait times and we are meeting the goal they set.

I also do recall being in the hospital in high school and going to a discharge lounge before leaving. They had a discharge nurse who went over all the paperwork with my mom while I sat in a comfy chair and watched tv. There were only a few other people in the room and we all had headphones for the tv. It was a small room with tvs, computers, lazy boys and couches. I just waited in the room until my mom came. I can see how a separate room would be beneficial. Not sure of all the logistics.

my hospital has a discharge lounge. we send stable patients awaiting medication from pharmacy which the rn in discharge lounge can chase. any teaching wounds dressing are done on ward and teaching. Pts normally use patient transport to get home or relatives. it's also used for transfers ingredients Pts to rehab. it has chairs provides drinks n snacks and can liase with transport.

So I start the day with 5 pts, 3 get dc orders & move into the lounge & I get 3 new post-ops? No thanks.

I get that every day- sometimes turning over the whole assignment.

You don't??

Actually, we have a generic lounge area that gets used for overflow sometimes. There are tables and chairs in there. The pt's have been d/c'd and signed their papers, and are just waiting for rides, meds etc. most of the time they are stable enough.

We get told we have to do this because of the bed crunch ( that hasnt gone away in 5 years) so not only will you poss. turn over your whole assignmnet, if the people havent been picked up yet, you are responsible for them too.

Sometimes the charge on dayshift will help in this matter, but if he/she has an assignment, too bad. Per bed assignment we cant hold up beds.

Was it another heading about professionals that said we were uniformed and punched a time clock. This sure seems like an assembly line to me.......

We have a small one that is attached to our fast track area that was created with the intention that pts just waiting for radiology or simple lab results and discharge, would wait there to open up beds for more fast track pts. However, we didn't care for the lack of privacy to discuss discharge papers and test results, so now it mainly gets used as a separate waiting room for the FT pts to help empty out the ED lobby.