Preparation for your discharge from Laurel Ward

Information for patients and carers

RDaSH leading the way with care

This booklet is intended to help you, your carers, your relatives and friends understand how your discharge from hospital takes place.

It is good practice to start planning your discharge as soon as you come into hospital. This means that we can begin to:

• Assess what your needs are likely to be when you are ready to leave hospital

• Involve the relevant staff who can help in meeting those needs e.g. social worker, occupational therapist, community mental health nurse

• Make arrangement for any equipment or services that you may need in the community when you are ready to leave

• Make arrangements for ongoing care in a residential or nursing home if this is required to meet your needs

• Make sure that you and your carers are given any information, help or advice that is needed to aid your wellbeing and recovery.

You and your carers will be invited to a meeting or ward round with staff involved in your care to discuss your assessment and treatment. At this meeting you will be given an expected date for your discharge based on your response to the medical treatment and nursing care.

All members of the team will work with you and your carers to discuss your discharge with you, to ensure that it is safe and timely.

Discharge process

As part of this process, nursing staff, alongside you or your carers will complete a continuing health care checklist. This may indicate that a full continuing health care decisions support tool needs to be completed. Both of these assessments help to decide if you are eligible for NHS continuing care funding. A social worker may also be involved in the assessment process. You will be asked to sign these and will be given a copy if you request one. A leaflet with more information on continuing health care assessments is available on the ward.

2 | Preparing for your discharge from Laurel Ward

In working with you to plan for your needs when you leave hospital, we may also ask the occupational therapist and / or physiotherapist to assess how you manage in our kitchen or at home to see if there are things which will help you to keep you safe at home.

In order to arrange community mental health services to support your discharge from Laurel Ward, a referral to a social worker from North Lincolnshire Council will be made. The social worker will complete a social care assessment of your needs, and will assess your eligibility for services to support your discharge home or placement in a residential or nursing care home.

The social worker will offer a carers assessment to your main carer.

Support following discharge

Once you have been discharged from the ward, various professionals may be involved in monitoring your wellbeing and recovery. The professional involved will depend on the level of support you need and whether you return home or to a residential or nursing home.

You will be provided with information on berfore your discharge about who these professionals are and how to contact them.

If you need information at any time about your discharge planning, you can arrange to speak to your named nurse or ward manager. They will be able to provide you with all the information you need.

In order to support the discharge process, there are various information leaflets on the ward to help you. These include:

• NHS continuing healthcare and NHS funded nursing care

• Putting care right: your guide to choosing a care home

• Attending a ward round

• Supporting your discharge from Laurel Ward

Please ask a nurse for the information.

www.rdash.nhs.uk | 3

This information is correct at the time of publishing Last Reviewed: August 2012

DP6999/08.12

We are a smokefree organisation.Please provide a smoke free environment for your healthcare provider

get