Iran Journal of Nursing

  Background & Aim: Discharge planning for patients, is seen as a key concept in the delivery of nursing care. Despite the advantages of discharge planning for patients, family and society, the definition and performance of this planning in hospital is ambiguous, and practically it is not performed in hospital. Therefore the objective of this study was to assess the reasons of lack of discharge planning performance by nurses.

  Material & Method: The design was a descriptive study with problem solving method, that carried out to determine the reasons of lack of discharge planning performance by nurses and introduce proper solutions to solve or reduce this problem. So a questionnaire was developed, then validated by 10 academic members. The sample of this study was 115 subgects in 3 groups: nurses, headnurses and supervisors of teaching hospitals of Tehran University of Medical Sciences.

  Results: The three groups mentioned 5 reasons as the main barriers of lack of discharge planning performance, that divided into 2 parts nurses' high working load with inappropriate situation of their working environment, and the lack of acquaintance of nurses, patients and their families about discharge planning, related to lack of sufficient information and in service education. Also, the structural reasons with the higest mean score (M=2.04) from the three domains were determined as the main reason of the lack of discharge planning performance. For data analysis, SPSS software was used.

  Conclusion: According to study result the importance of discharge planning to increase the quality and quantity of nursing care, the best solution determined as: formation of specialized groups with participating of education supervisors, one of clinical experienced nurses and lecturers in order to write and develop proper educational packages with students cooperation in nursing office and departments is recommended.