How late do you still discharge patients home?

[dhb]

So i was on call yesterday and did hand laceration under GA from 9pm to 11:15pm, the guy woke up when transferred to his bed and was virtually discharge ready at 11:30.
Would you send him home? (In this case the surgeon wanted to admit him to address issues with him in the morning so it didn't matter)
How to you proceed? what criteria do you use?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Arch Guillotti]

If the surgeon wants to admit someone, I don't argue.

 

[dhb]

If the surgeon wants to admit someone, I don't argue.

I'm not arguing i'm asking

 

[pjl]

Not necessarily this case, but in general, why would you keep someone in the hospital who doesnt need to be there?
Is the recovery risk different at 23:30 than at 11:30?
If the patient is appropriate and motivated to go home the same night, why stop them?

We do keep a lot of folks for social reasons after ~2300 though. This would have been block+MAC then home at our place unless the surgeon needed inpatient for antibiotics or monitoring or whatever.

 

[risnwb]

In residency we routinely discharged people in the middle of the night (1-3 am) mostly because there were no beds anyway and they didn't meet criteria for 23 hour obs...

 

[dhb]

Not necessarily this case, but in general, why would you keep someone in the hospital who doesnt need to be there?
Is the recovery risk different at 23:30 than at 11:30?
If the patient is appropriate and motivated to go home the same night, why stop them?

We do keep a lot of folks for social reasons after ~2300 though. This would have been block+MAC then home at our place unless the surgeon needed inpatient for antibiotics or monitoring or whatever.

There was a cubital nerve injury that was repaired by the surgeon so i stayed away from a block.

 

[pjl]

Good call