The discharge of medical patients consists often not of a single event but of a lengthy process of negotiation involving professional staff, patients and their relatives. Despite the fact that negotiation by patients to leave or to stay in hospital a few days longer is recognized by nurses and doctors, the extent to which this takes place is not understood. In this paper the process of both overt and covert negotation are examined together with the implications for patient care.
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Sue Armitage (1981) studied this question.