Patient-Oriented Discharge Summaries via Health Literacy Out Loud

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Patient-Oriented Discharge Summaries: Helping Patients Easily Understand Their Transition from Hospital to Home

HLOL #198: 5.01.2020 by Helen Osborne

Helen Osborne: Welcome to Health Literacy Out Loud.

I’m Helen Osborne, President of Health Literacy Consulting, founder of Health Literacy Month and author of the book Health Literacy from A to Z: Practical Ways to Communicate Your Health Message. I also produce and host this podcast series, Health Literacy Out Loud.

Today, I’m talking with Shoshana Hahn-Goldberg, who is a scientist and project lead at the University Health Network’s OpenLab in Canada.

She works with a multi-disciplinary team to discover and create solutions to issues in the healthcare system using techniques that span design, research and operational modeling.

Shoshana manages the project Patient-Oriented Discharge Summaries, also known as PODS, that is being used at over 20 hospitals in Ontario, Canada.

I first learned of PODS from a posting by Farrah Schwartz on a health literacy discussion list. I was so impressed by this discharge tool that I invited Shoshana to be a guest on Health Literacy Out Loud.

Welcome.

Shoshana Hahn-Goldberg: Hi, Helen. Thanks for having me.

Helen Osborne: A discharge tool, boy, that’s a really hard transition. Why in the world did you get involved in working on a discharge summary?

Shoshana Hahn-Goldberg: At OpenLab, where I work, we have open rounds every week where we open to the public and we go through all the projects we’re working on in the lab, and invite new ideas and new projects as well.

A group of us, together with some patients, healthcare providers and patient education professionals, came together and did some patient experience mapping to come up with a new project. That transition from hospital to home really came up as an area where there was a lot of opportunity to create some solutions.

Helen Osborne: I like the way you worded “opportunity.” From what I hear and my own experience as a patient or being around patients, and also all my work in health literacy, it’s a pain, that transition, and it’s risky.

I know that there’s just an overwhelming amount of information as people are still very sick and concerned about going home and don’t always know what to do.

What did you learn about what the problems are in that moment of discharge from the hospital?

Shoshana Hahn-Goldberg: Exactly what you’re saying. People are overwhelmed.

They’re sick. They’ve gotten so much information. A lot of it hasn’t been written down for them, so they’re expected to remember it.

Then when they get home, they’re still not really fully well, and they’re expected, they and their family, to really take over their care at that point.  LISTEN 17:13

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