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Care Pack #030

Discharged Before You Were Ready

For being sent home while you still knew you were not well. It does not tell you they were right.

Before you begin, where are you right now?

One tap. It gives you something to measure against at the end.

1, settled10, at its worst

You said you were not ready. Somebody wrote down that you were. And now you are at home with the same thing you went in with, plus the knowledge that the door closed behind you while you were still asking.

Discharge decisions are made on risk and on capacity. Neither of those is a measurement of how you feel, and neither is a statement that you are well. It is worth being precise about that, because the version most people take home is that a professional looked at them and concluded they were fine.

Being discharged is not a verdict that you are well. It is a decision about a bed.

  1. 1.Being discharged is not a verdict that you are well. Beds are allocated on risk and capacity, and neither of those is a measure of how you feel
  2. 2.Put the discharge letter somewhere you will find it again. It is the document everything else will need
  3. 3.Name one person who could come over or stay on the phone. Ask them today rather than saving it for worse
  4. 4.If it gets worse tonight, the crisis line and the emergency department are still yours to use. Being discharged does not spend that
  5. 5.Do not make any large decision today about work, housing or a relationship. The first day out is the worst day to decide anything

What to do with the disagreement

Write it down while it is fresh

What you were still experiencing on the day they sent you home, in plain sentences, with the date. Memory degrades fast and this is the document every later conversation will need.

A record written on the day is worth more than an argument made later.

Say the sentence out loud

To the GP, the follow-up service, whoever answers: "I was discharged and I do not think I was ready." Professionals respond to that sentence differently than to a description of symptoms.

Name the disagreement rather than re-presenting the illness.

Find out the threshold

Ask what the criteria for readmission actually are. Guessing at an invisible bar is exhausting and it leads people to wait until things are far worse than necessary.

You cannot meet a standard nobody has told you.

If it gets worse

Being discharged does not spend your right to the crisis line or the emergency department. People routinely believe that going back means admitting they wasted the time of everyone involved the first go. It does not, and deterioration after an early discharge is exactly the situation those services exist for.

If you were sent home from an emergency department with no follow-up arranged at all, ask your GP to request one in writing. A written request moves differently through a system than a phone call does.

They decided about a bed. You are the one with the information about how you actually are.

You reached the end. Where are you now?

One tap, however it landed.

1, settled10, at its worst

Take this one with you

You will not remember which page this was on at three in the morning. Put your email in and this pack comes to you, then one steady letter a month. Never a gate, and it stops the moment you say so.

There is more on the shelf

10 other packs sit alongside this one, written for the stretch you are in. All of them free, all of them yours.

See the other packs

This digital shelf is free for everyone, and it stays that way because people hold it open. You can be one of them, from $12 a month. Nobody is ever charged to read a pack.