Rising service demand, increased staffing pressure and a planned move to a new site prompted a trial of a new discharge process in the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh (RHSC). Our aim was to use quality improvement methodology with process mapping of systems, delineating good and bad variation and multiple PDSA cycles to measure the effectiveness of a Short Stay Policy (SSP) for acute general paediatric admissions. This policy streamlined patient discharge processes by empowering the middle grade team, who assessed the children overnight, to discharge patients prior to the medical consultant ward round the next day. The Standard Policy (StP) only enabled consultants to discharge children. As low acuity stable children would be seen on the later aspect of the ward round, some patients waited an additional 4 to 8 hours for the decision to discharge.

 

We aimed to calculate the potential time, personnel and financial savings made by this new policy, and to ensure we maintained a  high quality, safe service without diminishing child and family care...