Evaluating a New Way to Prepare Parents of Hospitalized Children for Discharge and Management of Child at Home

The specific aims of the study are:

1. To estimate the effect of an intervention designed to improve family self-management after discharge of a hospitalized child on:
2. Family self-management process (e.g., knowledge, self-regulation, and social facilitation)
3. Proximal family self-management behavioral outcomes, (e.g., post-discharge parental coping difficulty and family impact), and unplanned use of post-discharge services (calls to family/friends, health care providers, hospital; unscheduled office visits, urgent care/ED visits, readmission).
4. To describe nurse assessment and patient responses to the FSM-DPI.
5. To compare nurse satisfaction with discharge teaching process when nurses perform discharge teaching using the FSM-DPI vs. the standard discharge teaching approach.

A novel discharge preparation intervention delivered by nurses to parents of hospitalized children who are being discharged home was developed based on previous research conducted by the investigators. The intervention is grounded in the individual and family self-management Theory. To test the impact of the intervention on discharge preparation process and parent outcomes, the investigators will conduct a pilot trial implementation using trained staff nurses to deliver the intervention. To measure the effects of the intervention a difference- in-differences approach with be used with selection of 200 parents with 50 in each of 4 groups: Baseline control 1 (parents assigned for usual care to study nurses before training on the use of the intervention); Baseline control group 2 ( parent assigned for usual care to other than study nurses); Implementation group ( parents assigned to study nurses who will receive the intervention); Concurrent control group ( parent assigned to other than study nurses). The study will be conducted on two nursing units and half of the sample will be selected from each unit using a random selection procedure.

Data to be collected from all parents (baseline control, implementation, concurrent control) on the day of hospital discharge include: Parent enrollment sheet for collection of parent demographics; Quality of Discharge Teaching Scale, Readiness for Hospital Discharge Scale, Care Transition Measure. In addition the CHW Synergy form will be copied from the child's medical record to provide information on child characteristics of the hospitalization. At 3 weeks post-discharge, parents will be contacted by telephone to obtain outcome data using the Post-Coping Difficulty Scale and the PedsQL™. Parents will also be asked questions about post-discharge utilization of health services.

Nurses will record process measures related to the delivery of the intervention. In addition the nurse of parents in implementation and control groups will complete assessments of patient readiness for discharge using the Readiness for Hospital Discharge Scale and will rate their experience with the discharge process on a survey developed by the research team.

Analysis will provide information about the utility of the FSM-DPI and preliminary data on which to base revisions and enhancements to the intervention and for development of a larger implementation trial.