The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of the Engaging Parents in Education for Discharge (ePED) iPad application on parent experiences of hospital discharge teaching and care coordination. Hypotheses were: parents exposed to discharge teaching using ePED will have 1) higher quality of discharge teaching and 2) better care coordination than parents exposed to usual discharge teaching. The secondary purpose examined group differences in the discharge teaching, care coordination, and 30-day readmissions for parents of children with and without a chronic condition. Design/Methods Using a quasi-experimental design, ePED was implemented on one inpatient unit (n = 211) and comparison group (n = 184) from a separate unit at a pediatric academic medical center. Patient experience outcome measures collected on day of discharge included Quality of Discharge Teaching Scale-Delivery (QDTS-D) and care coordination measured by Care Transition Measure (CTM). Thirty-day readmission was abstracted from records. Results Parents taught using ePED reported higher QDTS-D scores than parents without ePED (p = .002). No differences in CTM were found between groups. Correlations between QDTS-D and CTM were small for ePED (r = 0.14, p 0.03) and non-ePED (r = 0.29, p < .001) parent groups. CTM was weakly associated with 30-day readmissions in the ePED group. Conclusion The use of ePED by the discharging nurse enhances parent-reported quality of discharge teaching. Practice implications The ePED app is a theory-based structured conversation guide to engage parents in discharge preparation. Nursing implementation of ePED contributes to optimizing the patient/family healthcare experience.
Development of a theory-based intervention, the translation of theoretical knowledge to clinical innovation, is an important step toward testing the effectiveness of the theory in guiding clinical practice. Clinical nurses will establish the practice relevance through future use and refinement of the intervention.
This scoping review was conducted to examine the range, nature, and extent of the published family engagement literature specific to the pediatric acute care setting to highlight future research and practice development opportunities. Included studies ( N = 247) revealed global relevance. Engagement strategies ranged from more passive such as allowing/encouraging families to be present at the bedside to more active strategies aimed at promoting mutual and reciprocal nurse–patient interactions. Family engagement is distinguished by a mutually beneficial partnership of families with health care team members and care organizations. Future research in the area of family engagement in pediatric nursing should focus on determining the core engaging health professional behaviors and engaged parent outcomes; extending the knowledge base related to mutually beneficial partnerships between families and health care teams; developing effectiveness studies to determine the optimal engaging actions by teams to achieve parent engagement; and measuring the influence of engagement on parent and infant/child outcomes.
Pediatric hospitals have not experienced the increase in patient volumes or received the same media attention as adult hospitals. Yet, the impact has been equally and significantly palpable. The Department of Nursing Research and EBP continues to be available for consultation and mentoring of staff, as staff use current evidence to drive continued practice changes and consider new projects. Alternative processes for research methods will enable the continuation of important nursing research.
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