Questions asked by patients and their support groups during family conferences on inpatient rehabilitation units

Although discharge planning from rehabilitation units is discussed in social service and nursing literature, no studies have documented what information the family specifically seeks in preparing for the patient's discharge. In order to gain insight into this issue, the residents assigned to two rehabilitation units were asked to paraphrase and transcribe all questions asked by randomly selected patients and their support groups during family conferences. Forty-six conferences with 45 patients were evaluated, and 213 questions were recorded. Each question was placed into one of ten categories, based on the topic of the question. The most common topic about which information was sought was medical issues not directly related to the primary rehabilitation diagnosis (17% of all questions). Discharge planning was the second most common topic (16%). Thirty-one percent of all questions were related to medical issues. The information derived from this study will help rehabilitation professionals to be better prepared for family conferences and discharge planning.