Nurses’ experiences of transitions of older patients from hospitals to community care. A nation-wide survey in Norway

Moving older patients from hospitals to community services is a critical phase of integrated care. Yet there has been little large-scale research on the quality of these transitions. We investigated how Norwegian nurses working in community care services (N = 4,312) and at in-patient wards at hospitals (N = 2,421) experienced the quality of transitions of older patients from hospitals to community care. We tested hypotheses derived from qualitative research and consistent with predictions, we found that compared to hospital nurses, the nurses working in community care experienced lower quality of patient transitions and were less satisfied with information exchange on patients’ condition and needs. Further, when comparing groups of community nurses, we confirmed the hypothesis that nurses in home nursing were more dissatisfied with the quality of transitions and information exchange than nurses in nursing homes. We conclude that hospital nurses should have more face-to-face or telephone contact with community nurses, and specifically with home nurses. Further, we suggest that means are implemented to promote a mutual understanding of the older patients’ pathway from one service to the other, and to improve co-ordination across the services.