A delayed discharge is defined as when a patient is clinically ready to be discharged from the
hospital setting but continues to occupy a hospital bed (Public Health Scotland, 2021).
Delayed discharges resulted in patients spending an additional 358,426 days in hospitals
across Scotland in 2021 (Public Health Scotland, 2021). Delayed discharges can be
multifactorial and have an impact on the patient, who is keen to return home, while also
adding increased pressure to the flow of patients through the hospital. The most common
patient reported reason for delayed discharge was “waiting for medicines” in the 2018
Scottish National Inpatient Experience Survey (Scottish Government, 2018). This research
utilised a scoping review to investigate the existing knowledge base on medication supply at
the point of hospital discharge. A second scoping review focused on the methodology to be
used within this research by examining where process mapping has been used as a tool to
identify areas for improvement within a hospital or community pharmacy setting. The
scoping reviews informed the research with a mixed methodology approach, utilising process
mapping and SHERPA task classification along with timing data analysis to examine the
pathway of patient medication supply at the point of hospital discharge in a selection of six
Scottish hospitals. The results from the research demonstrated that all the hospitals visited
shared eight stages within the medication supply at discharge pathway, along with having a
similar number of stages and steps within each pathway. The median time for completion of
the patient medication supply at the point of discharge for 50 patients in each hospital varied
from 309 minutes (5.1 hours) to 1709 minutes (28.4 hours). The process maps created in this
research can be used as a starting to point to enable discussion on areas for improvement
within the medication supply at discharge process and to give consideration for using other
settings, such as community pharmacies, to supply patients with discharge medication.
| Date of Award | 8 May 2025 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Awarding Institution | - University Of Strathclyde
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| Sponsors | University of Strathclyde |
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| Supervisor | Marion Bennie (Supervisor) & Tanja Mueller (Supervisor) |
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