Preparing for a planned hospital stay

Most of the advice about hospital is about coming home. The fortnight before you go in gets almost none, which is odd, because it is the only part you can plan calmly.

This is what is worth doing in those two weeks, in rough order of how much difference it makes. It is general information, not medical advice. What applies to your own surgery or admission is a conversation for your treating team.

Ask the questions while there is time

The single most useful thing you can do before an admission is find out what you will not be able to do afterwards.

Ask your surgeon, specialist or GP: how long do you expect me to be in, what will I be unable to do when I come out, and for how long. Will I be able to get up steps, lift a kettle, get in and out of a shower, drive, bend. Will I need equipment at home, and who organises it, and when.

That last question decides a lot. Equipment that is ordered before you go in is usually there when you get back. Equipment that gets raised on discharge afternoon often is not. Our resource on what to ask before they send you home is the discharge-day version of this list, and it is worth reading now rather than then.

Ask about the paperwork too. A discharge summary for your GP, a medication list, and a follow-up appointment date are the three things that most often go missing.

Tell the people who turn up at your house

If you already have home care, ring your Care Lead as soon as you have a date.

Two things happen with that call. Your visits pause for the days you are an inpatient, because the hospital is providing your care, and the restart gets built in advance rather than after the fact. Our guide on funding while you are in hospital explains that mechanism and what to check about your budget.

The more valuable part is planning the week you come out, while you are still well enough to think about it. Coming home usually needs more help than going in, not less, and often different help: showering rather than housework, meals rather than transport. That week can be rostered now.

Tell your GP as well, and anyone in the family who would need to know if things ran long.

Make the house easy to come back to

Do this while you can still lift things.

Food. Cook and freeze more than you think you need, in single portions, or arrange for meals to be delivered for the first fortnight. This is the thing people are most grateful for and least likely to have done. If food is already difficult, our meals and nutrition support covers what regular help looks like.

The path from the door to the bed and the bathroom. Clear it properly. Rugs that slide, a hall table that narrows a doorway, a cord across the floor, the box that has lived at the bottom of the stairs since March. If you are coming home on a frame or a stick, that path needs to be wide and empty. Our home safety checklist walks the house room by room.

The bathroom. Ask whether you will need a rail, a shower stool or a raised toilet seat, and get it fitted before you go rather than after.

Sleeping downstairs. If the bedroom is up a flight and you are coming home unable to climb, decide now where you will sleep, and set it up before you leave.

The dull things. Bins out, mail collected, pets arranged, the plants watered, any bill that falls due while you are in there paid or set up. Write down who is doing what and stick it on the fridge, because “someone is handling the bins” is how bins get missed.

Pack the boring bag properly

Take a current list of every medication with its dose, your Medicare and any concession card, your My Aged Care details, your GP’s name and number, glasses, hearing aids with spare batteries, and a phone charger with a long cord. Put your emergency contacts on paper as well as in the phone.

Our one-page emergency sheet is designed for exactly this and fits in the front pocket of a bag.

Take comfortable clothes you can get on and off one-handed, and slippers with a back on them. Hospital floors are slippery and backless slippers cause falls.

Decide who makes the calls

Name one person as the point of contact, tell the hospital who it is, and tell the rest of the family to ring that person rather than the ward. It saves a great deal of noise at a point where nobody has much patience left.

If there is any paperwork about medical decision-making you have been meaning to sort, this is the fortnight for it. Start with myagedcare.gov.au or ring 1800 200 422 for where to get help, and see a solicitor for anything legal. Names and forms differ by state.

What we do with it

At Aldera an admission date goes into One Story, the single record your whole Care Circle works from. Your Care Lead handles the pause, holds your days where possible, and builds the week you come out before you go in, including a heavier first week if that is what the surgeon expects.

When you are home, our guide on coming home from hospital covers the first fortnight back.

Going in soon and not sure what will be waiting for you? Get in touch. A real person answers.