Nurse-led Discharge in Pediatric Care: A Scoping Review

Patients and caregivers frequently report feeling ill-prepared during the transition from hospital to home. Given the privileged position nurses occupy within the health care setting, they are often an appropriate health care professional to lead the discharge process. We aimed to map what is currently known about nurse-led/facilitated discharge programs, interventions, models, or frameworks for the pediatric population.

We conducted a scoping review following the Joanna Briggs Institute Methodology. Published literature targeting children 0-18 years old being discharged from acute care to home and describing a nurse leading the discharge planning/process was included.

A search strategy was developed and implemented in four electronic databases; CINAHL, MEDLINE, Embase, and Web of Science. We also hand searched three high impact journals and reviewed reference lists of relevant articles. This search resulted in 1485 records. Based on our eligibility criteria, 9 articles were included in this review. Two independent reviewers screened each eligible article and extracted relevant information.

Terminology and program structure varied greatly across included studies. Critical appraisal revealed a lack of high quality research designs.

We identified a paucity of nurse-led/facilitated discharge programs evaluated within the pediatric population. The majority of studies were inadequately reported, leaving it difficult to identify development, implementation, and evaluation strategies.

Given the positive outcomes reported across all articles included in our review, future empirical research is warranted to explore this role within nursing practice.