Annex A > Chapter 15 - Post-operative Care > Discharge > Post-discharge care

Post-discharge care

149 Post-discharge support and counselling are dealt with in Chapter 16 - Support and Counselling.

150 Julia Thomas explained that, in addition to the involvement of the health visitor and Helen Stratton, Cardiac Liaison Nurse, or Helen Vegoda, Counsellor in Paediatric Cardiology, parents received a discharge booklet, and:

`... on discharge home, a doctor's letter and tablets to take out were provided, and the parents were spoken to at length about what to expect when their child went home. This included advice on mobilising, infection risk, eating, pain, behaviour, and starting school ... Transport home was organised by the ward clerk and may have involved the ambulance services if the parents could not provide transport. The child was always seen at outpatients between four to six weeks after discharge at BRHSC.' [179]

151 As to the management of discharge and future care, Dr Jordan told the Inquiry:

`The routine was for appointments to be made at the Children's Hospital for the cardiac surgeons' clinic. Although these ran at the same time as the cardiologists' (Wednesday afternoons) it was chance whether the cardiologist responsible for the pre-operative care was the one who was in the clinic that day. When patients were seen by the junior surgical staff there were sometimes problems in management of drug regimes and often no appreciation that follow-up in a peripheral clinic was more appropriate.' [180]

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Footnotes

[179] WIT 0213 0046 Julia Thomas

[180] WIT 0099 0046 Dr Jordan