Abstract
Background
Tiny and sick neonates stay for a longer duration in the Neonatal unit. Discharge of these neonates gets quite delayed due to typing the elaborative summary followed by other discharge formalities. This results in unpleasant experiences for most parents and some of them express the displeasure quite vocally. Apart from that, the presentation of crucial information is not uniform due to the variable levels of experience and language proficiency of the doctors who prepare discharge summaries.
Primary Objective
To develop a graphical format of discharge summary for neonatal patients and compare it with a traditional narrative discharge summary.
Method
In this study, we developed a Microsoft Excel template for a visual representation of main discharge information with scope for narration when required. We compared this with the traditional narrative summary of a hypothetical case.
Results
20 pediatricians with experience in neonatal intensive care participated and filled in the scorecard after going through both formats of the discharge summary. Overall, the grapho-narrative summary scored significantly better with a median score of 114 compared to narrative summary score of 90 (p=.004).
Conclusion
Grapho-narrative format is quicker to prepare, provides the information as a snapshot which is preferred by pediatricians.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
