Journal of advanced nursing
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Providing appropriate follow-up health/long-term care services after hospital discharge for elderly persons is important to enhance health and quality of life. Therefore, identifying factors that affect follow-up service utilization has become an important concern. Most studies of predictors of follow-up service utilization for elderly persons after discharge were conducted in the United States of America (USA). Taiwan differs substantially from the USA in health care system, clinical practice, case-mix, culture, and social organization; thus the findings from the USA need to be validated in Taiwan to ensure appropriate discharge referrals. ⋯ When taking nursing home and home nursing utilization into considerations at the same time, the elderly person's pre-admission institutionalization and the caregiver's preference for institutional displacement strongly predicted nursing home utilization after hospital discharge. The elder's self-care ability, conscious level, and tubes remaining before discharge strongly predicted the use of home nursing services after discharge.
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This paper highlights the lack of consideration that is given to power in the health and social sciences, which is a continuing problem with both single study research and more importantly for meta-analysis. ⋯ It is demonstrated that incorporating power analysis into this meta-analysis would have prevented misleading conclusions being reached. Some suggestions are made for changes in the protocol of meta-analytic studies, which highlight the importance of power analysis.