When you are discharged from hospital you will receive information from different health professionals regarding:

• Medications. The pharmacist and the nurses will go through all your medications before or at the time of your discharge - this will include the purpose of your medications, what side effects there might be and how to take them
• Who to contact if you have concerns after discharge. This may be your GP, the District Nurse or you may require immediate attention
• What to look out for following discharge. This will include any or danger signals that we can alert you to so that you can seek further advice from your GP
• Hospital equipment. You may receive equipment that you will need when you are home and this will be discussed with you by members of the team e.g.. Occupational Therapist, Respiratory Team, Physiotherapy
• Discharge letter and form. You will also receive a Discharge Letter indicating what medications you are being discharged on and further information about why you have been in hospital. This letter also goes directly to your GP to inform them of this admission to hospital. You will also receive a Discharge Form which is for you to keep safe and contains discharge information that you will have discussed with the nurse/staff member discharging you.

Wherever possible we will aim to discharge you from hospital in a timely manner. Late discharges from our wards may occur, however, for a number of reasons; it might be you are waiting for a final review from a senior doctor; you may be waiting for transport; you may be waiting for medications. We will endeavour to expedite your discharge as quickly as possible but if you are discharged from hospital late into the evening, this will be discussed with you and should only occur if it is safe to do so.

If you are in one of our assessment units such as Accident and Emergency and the Clinical Decisions Unit or the assessment area of the Acute Medical Unit, you may be discharged during the night once assessment and monitoring, or a review by a doctor, shows you are able to return home and do not need to be admitted to the main hospital wards. As always we will only discharge you if it is safe to do so.

The hospital works with the North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) to provide patient transport services for patients who are eligible for those services. However, we are unable to provide transport for all patients when being discharged from hospital.Wherever possible we would ask that relatives and friends come and collect you and take you home. There will be times when this is not possible and we do understand and want to help at these times.

Out of hours, when ambulances are needed to take patients who have been in A&E or an assessment unit, please be aware that you could be waiting for the ambulance to take you home for some time as we depend on the emergency ambulance service at these times. We work closely with NWAS to do this as quickly as possible, but we cannot book a definite set time for out of hours ambulance transport due to other unpredictable pressures on ambulances.