ArticleJournal of general internal medicine2026
Optimizing Discharge Summaries: A Survey of Inpatient Clinician Perspectives and the Path to Standardization.
Article in Journal of general internal medicine, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Automated Brief Hospital Course Summarization in Cardiac Surgery Using a Lightweight Large Language Model-Based Framework: Development and Evaluation Study on the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care-IV.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- Inclusion of Diagnostic Imaging in Orthopaedic Discharge Summaries: A Quality Improvement Project.Cureus · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundOver the past two decades, care for complex medical patients has become increasingly fragmented, leading to higher risk of errors during transitions of care. Discharge summaries are crucial for ensuring continuity of care, providing essential information about a patient's hospital stay to both primary care and future inpatient clinicians. However, discharge summaries often suffer from inaccuracies, excessive length, and poor formatting. Standardized templates have shown the potential to improve summary quality and clinician satisfaction but require expert input. The previously published Phase I of our initiative surveyed outpatient clinician perspectives on discharge summaries. To our knowledge, there are no published studies evaluating inpatient clinician uses of, and preferences about, discharge summaries.
objectiveThis study explores inpatient clinicians' preferences as readers of discharge summaries with the goal of enhancing effectiveness and supporting the development of a standardized template to aid all transitions of care.
designWe conducted a multisite, multidisciplinary survey of inpatient clinicians, including advanced practice providers and trainees, assessing their use of and preferences for discharge summaries. Qualtrics surveys were distributed electronically and in person across several institutions from January 2022 to June 2022. MAIN MEASURES: Our primary measure was the ranking of 13 discharge summary components based on importance to the reader. KEY
resultsOur survey response rate was 31%. We found significant agreement between the 5 most and 5 least important components identified by inpatient clinicians. The 5 highest-ranked components were hospital course, discharge diagnoses, medication reconciliation, follow-up, and history of present illness.
conclusionsUpon analysis of Phase I and Phase II of our study, there was consensus between discharge summary preferences of inpatient and outpatient clinicians regarding their prioritized components. This consistency may enable institutions to develop templates that reflect these priorities, improving the brevity and clarity of these important communication tools during care transitions.
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