PODS:Patient Oriented Discharge Summaries

The CICC is working on a project to improve the patient experience when leaving the hospital by creating a patient-oriented discharge summary (PODS).

The discharge summaries currently issued by most hospitals are information dense and oriented to the physician rather than the patients. The CICC will work together with patients to design the PODS so that the information contained on the PODS is information that is important and relevant for patients to know when they are discharged and so that the information is presented in a way that is easy for patients to understand.

Instructions on how to take medications or who to see in follow-up can be especially challenging for patients with limited health literacy or language barriers. The CICC will be using visual communication to address this issue. We want to create a summary that patients will use. We want them to hang their PODS on their fridge and refer to it often.

If you have been admitted to the hospital in the last year, or have a close family member who was, please consider contacting us and getting involved in the PODS project. Contact Shoshana Hahn-Goldberg at shoshana.hahn-goldberg@uhn.ca