Thesis
Medication supply process at patient discharge across a selection of hospitals in Scotland
- Creator
- Rights statement
- Awarding institution
- University of Strathclyde
- Date of award
- 2025
- Thesis identifier
- T17323
- Person Identifier (Local)
- 202177149
- Qualification Level
- Qualification Name
- Department, School or Faculty
- Abstract
- A delayed discharge is defined as when a patient is clinically ready to be discharged from the hospital setting but continues to occupy a hospital bed (Public Health Scotland, 2021). Delayed discharges resulted in patients spending an additional 358,426 days in hospitals across Scotland in 2021 (Public Health Scotland, 2021). Delayed discharges can be multifactorial and have an impact on the patient, who is keen to return home, while also adding increased pressure to the flow of patients through the hospital. The most common patient reported reason for delayed discharge was “waiting for medicines” in the 2018 Scottish National Inpatient Experience Survey (Scottish Government, 2018). This research utilised a scoping review to investigate the existing knowledge base on medication supply at the point of hospital discharge. A second scoping review focused on the methodology to be used within this research by examining where process mapping has been used as a tool to identify areas for improvement within a hospital or community pharmacy setting. The scoping reviews informed the research with a mixed methodology approach, utilising process mapping and SHERPA task classification along with timing data analysis to examine the pathway of patient medication supply at the point of hospital discharge in a selection of six Scottish hospitals. The results from the research demonstrated that all the hospitals visited shared eight stages within the medication supply at discharge pathway, along with having a similar number of stages and steps within each pathway. The median time for completion of the patient medication supply at the point of discharge for 50 patients in each hospital varied from 309 minutes (5.1 hours) to 1709 minutes (28.4 hours). The process maps created in this research can be used as a starting to point to enable discussion on areas for improvement within the medication supply at discharge process and to give consideration for using other settings, such as community pharmacies, to supply patients with discharge medication.
- Advisor / supervisor
- Bennie, Marion
- Resource Type
- DOI
Relations
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PDF of thesis T17323 | 2025-06-10 | Public | Download |