Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Do pet owners understand discharge instructions after a vet visit?
By Flegel, Thomas et al.·Published in Journal of veterinary internal medicine·2024·Department for Small Animals, Germany·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: Client's understanding of instructions for small animals in a veterinary neurological referral center.
Plain-English summary
A study looked at how well pet owners understood the instructions they received when their dogs or cats were discharged from a veterinary hospital for neurological issues. The researchers found that while many clients could remember some information, they often struggled with details about medication side effects, ongoing symptoms, and care instructions. Older clients, particularly those over 50, had a harder time recalling the information. This suggests that veterinarians should emphasize important instructions during discharge to help ensure that pet owners fully understand how to care for their pets after leaving the hospital. Overall, the findings indicate that clients can only partially remember the information given to them at discharge.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: It is not known how much information clients retrieve from discharge instructions. OBJECTIVE: To investigate client's understanding of discharge instructions and influencing factors. ANIMALS: Dogs and cats being hospitalized for neurological diseases. METHODS: Clients were presented questionnaires regarding their pet's disease, diagnostics, treatments, prognosis and discharge instructions at time of discharge and 2 weeks later. The same questions were answered by discharging veterinarians at time of discharge. Clients answered additional questions regarding the subjective feelings during discharge conversation. Data collected included: data describing discharging veterinarian (age, gender, years of clinical experience, specialist status), data describing the client (age, gender, educational status). Raw percentage of agreement (RPA) between answers of clinicians and clients as well as factors potentially influencing the RPA were evaluated. RESULTS: Of 230 clients being approached 151 (65.7%) and 70 (30.4%) clients responded to the first and second questionnaire, respectively (130 dog and 30 cat owners). The general RPA between clinician's and client's responses over all questions together was 68.9% and 66.8% at the 2 time points. Questions regarding adverse effects of medication (29.0%), residual clinical signs (35.8%), and confinement instructions (36.8%) had the lowest RPAs at the first time point. The age of clients (P = .008) negatively influenced RPAs, with clients older than 50 years having lower RPA. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL IMPORTANCE: Clients can only partially reproduce information provided at discharge. Only clients' increasing age influenced recall of information. Instructions deemed to be important should be specifically stressed during discharge.
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38700383/