Leaving hospital

When you’re feeling well enough, we’ll help you get ready to leave hospital. This is called being discharged.

It’s important to leave hospital as soon as you’re ready. Staying in hospital for longer than you need to can slow down your recovery.

How to know if you’re ready

We’ll start planning early for how and when you might leave hospital. We might give you an expected discharge date to help you plan.

We’ll always make sure you’re ready before you leave. Our doctors and nurses will confirm this by doing:

• health assessments to make sure your physical condition is stable
• a discharge assessment to check what support you need when you’ve left hospital

Talk to us if you have any worries about leaving hospital. We’re here to make sure you feel confident about your care, even after you leave.

Getting the right support

If you have friends and family who can support you, let them know you’re getting ready to leave hospital.

To make sure you're safe after you leave, we might ask you:

• about your living situation
• how many stairs you have to climb
• if you have family or friends who can support you
• if you get support from social services

We’ll make sure you know how to get the support you need.

Transport

Make a plan for how you’ll get to the place you’re staying. You might need to:

• contact family and friends
• tell your carer
• book a taxi

Depending on what treatment or procedure you've had, you might need to go home with somebody who can look after you (an escort).

If you cannot arrange your own transport, you might be able to use our patient transport services. This takes time to organise, so tell us as soon as possible if you need to use this.

Medicines

If you brought in medicines, we’ll give them back to you before you leave hospital.

If you need new medicines, we’ll give you enough to last 14 days. We’ll send a discharge letter to your GP that includes information about your new medicines. They’ll be able to prescribe more of them if necessary.

Your pharmacist will explain everything you need to know about taking your medicines safely. Ask us if you have any questions or read our information about medicines and how to manage them.

Questions you can ask the pharmacist  

• Why do I need to take this medicine?
• How do I take this medicine?
• Are there any alternatives?
• When should I take this medicine?
• How long do I need to take this medicine for?
• Do I need to take this medicine with food?
• What are the side effects?
• Who should I contact if I get side effects?
• Do I need any monitoring or follow-up appointments?
• What should I do when if I run out of medicine?

You can also join our discharge medicines service to get support from your local community pharmacist after you’ve left hospital. Talk to us if you’re interested.

Follow-up appointments

The end of your hospital stay is not the end of your care with us. You’ll usually have follow-up appointments so we can check how you’re doing. These appointments might be over the phone or face-to-face. They might be in the hospital where you were treated, at your local hospital, or at a community site.

Before you leave hospital, we’ll let you know if you need a follow-up appointment and when it might be.

Some of our services let you arrange your own follow-up appointments when you think you need them. Ask your healthcare team about patient initiated follow-up, or PIFU.

Leaving the ward

Once your hospital care team has confirmed that you’re fit enough to leave, you’ll need to get ready.

If you’re ready to leave but you’re still waiting for some final checks, we’ll take you to a day room or the discharge unit.

Discharge unit

The discharge unit is a lounge inside the hospital where you can wait comfortably for the things you need. We have discharge units at Guy’s Hospital and St Thomas’ Hospital.

You can wait in the discharge unit for:

• your medicines
• your discharge letter
• any medical equipment we need to give you, like walking aids
• a fit note if you need to be off work for more than 7 days
• your family and friends
• a taxi you’ve booked
• other planned transport

It can take a few hours for us to prepare everything we need to discharge you. We’ll do our best to make sure the process is as smooth as possible.

Our team of nurses will care for you while you wait in the discharge unit. We can:

• give you a packed lunch, snacks and hot or cold drinks
• check you have everything you need to leave hospital
• answer any questions you have

Collecting valuables

If you asked us to store any valuables, remember to collect them from your nurse or from the hospital cashiers' office.