Experience of medical senior house officers in preparing discharge summaries

The discharge summary communicates information about a patient's stay in hospital and follows the hand written summary that accompanies the patient on discharge. Previous studies have indicated dissatis-faction among general practitioners with the quality of discharge summaries.1 2 Most are done by senior house officers, and this survey assesses their experience in preparing them. A medical senior house officer from each of 100 acute hospitals in England replied to a telephoned questionnaire about teaching they had received on preparing discharge summaries and arrangements for doing summaries in their hospital. Ninety two of the doctors prepared summaries in their present post. On six firms the house physician was responsible, while a consultant and registrar were responsible in the other two. Six senior house …