Introduction:

When the patients are going to be discharged from the hospital, the nurses must execute the discharge plan based on their specific needs. It is essential to promote self-care in patients to prevent future medical complications and readmissions.

Objective:

To evaluate the implementation of the discharge plan by the nursing professionals in the internal medicine and surgical services at the San José hospital in Popayán, Colombia, in 2017.

Materials and methods:

This quantitative study has a descriptive and transversal design. The research population is composed of nurses from the internal medicine and surgical services from the San José Hospital and patients that are going to be discharged from the clinic in 24 hours or less.

Results:

The information was collected by using an instrument that was designed for the participants to confirm if they fit the inclusion criteria. According to collected data, 94.7% of the patients had scheduled discharges, 58.6% of them had received indications in the last 48 hours before the discharge on how the self-care routines must be followed at home. Additionally, 100% of people said they understood the recommendations given by the nurses. Finally, 100% of the nursing professionals claimed that they did not know any methodology to prepare the discharge plan, and about 80% of them did not know about the existence of a patient's exit procedure and patient's medical follow-up in the institution.

Conclusions:

The patient discharge plan is not standardized, so it is not evaluated in the institution. The nursing staff is focused only on explaining the medical indications, but they are not focused on creating their discharge plans.

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