Standardizing Key Issues from Hospital Through an Electronic Multi-Professional Discharge Checklist to Ensure Continuity of Care.

This article describes development of the multi-professional discharge checklist and its implementation into the nursing documentation system (NDS) as part of the patient's overall care plan. The aim was to harmonize patient's admission and care period documentation and to improve the quality of electronic nursing discharge summaries. The ultimate goal was to ensure continuity of care. The multidisciplinary discharge checklist was developed in two phases to support the discharge of elderly patients (over 65 years). First, the information content of the checklist was defined, and second, it was integrated into the NDS. Focus groups of social and healthcare professionals (n = 82) in specialist health care, primary health care and social services defined the information content and participated in the feedback and checking rounds. The development work should continue. Particular attention should be given to the technical performance of discharge checklists in the NDS.