Factors Associated with the Transition from Discharge Preparation to Home Rehabilitation in Elderly Day Surgery: A...

To explore the key factors influencing the transition from discharge preparation to home-based rehabilitation in elderly day surgery patients.

A cross-sectional study was conducted on 340 elderly patients (≥60 years) who underwent day surgery at Huadong Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University in Shanghai from November 2024 to September 2025. Standardized scales were used to conduct questionnaire surveys, and the collected data were analyzed by means of correlation analysis, multiple linear regression and structural equation modeling (SEM).

Correlation analysis revealed that discharge readiness was positively correlated with gender, health behavior capacity and discharge teaching quality, while it presented a negative correlation with family support (P<0.05). Multiple linear regression further verified that health behavior capacity served as a significant positive predictive factor for discharge readiness (β=0.233, P<0.001). However, the SEM yielded inconsistent findings: family support exhibited the strongest positive direct predictive effect on discharge readiness with a path coefficient of 0.47, health behavior capacity showed a weak positive predictive effect (path coefficient = 0.31), and discharge teaching quality exerted only a trivial impact (path coefficient = 0.15). The contradictory results between correlation analysis and SEM might be attributed to the complex mediating or moderating relationships among latent variables in the holistic model.

Family support is the core factor, and health behavior capacity is an important factor affecting the discharge readiness of elderly day surgery patients, while the current discharge teaching has a limited direct effect. In clinical practice, it is necessary to strengthen family support, improve patients' health behavior self-efficacy, and optimize the discharge teaching model with effective linkage to family support. Further research should adopt multi-center longitudinal studies with extended variables to obtain more comprehensive and accurate results.