• Faiz S Shivji, Darryl N Ramoutar, Chris Bailey, and James B Hunter.
• Specialist Registrar in Trauma and Orthopaedics,, Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, Nottingham NG7 2UH.
• Brit J Hosp Med. 2015 Jan 1;76(1):46-9.

IntroductionSuccessful communication between hospitals and primary care is of paramount importance to enable continuity of care and maintain patient safety post-discharge. Discharge summaries are the simplest way for GPs to obtain information about a patient's hospital stay. A quality improvement study was conducted with the aim of increasing the content of discharge summaries for inpatients in the authors' department.MethodsA prospective review of 60 electronic discharge summaries was conducted over a 6-week period. The content of discharge summaries was reviewed in accordance with local trust guidelines. Targeted, intensive, cost and time-effective educational interventions were then conducted. A post-intervention review of 60 discharge summaries was performed. A further review of 60 discharge summaries was performed after 12 months.ResultsInitial results pre-intervention confirmed suboptimal content of discharge summaries. Post-intervention results showed each component of discharge summaries improved in terms of content, with six of eight components having a statistically significant (P<0.05) increase. This was maintained after 12 months.ConclusionsThis study has demonstrated how simple, intensive educational sessions can lead to an improvement in discharge summaries and communication with primary care.

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