“Against Medical Advice” Discharges Among HIV-Infected Patients: Health and Health Services Outcomes

Nurses are often first to identify and manage a patient leaving against medical advice (AMA), and so they are critical contributors to the development of strategies to address this problem. We studied AMA discharge in order to help develop useful interventions. We performed a cross-sectional analysis of 55,938 discharges from a single urban hospital for the years 2002-2003 and 2012-2013. AMA discharge rates were higher for HIV-infected patients than for patients with alcohol-related disorders or sickle-cell anemia in both time periods, even after adjustment for age, race, sex, insurance status, and household income.

Source: Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care - October 20, 2016 Category: Nursing Authors: David Alfandre, Jingyan Yang, Katherine Harwood, Peter Gordon, Helen-Maria Lekas, Steven J. Chang, Michael T. Yin Source Type: research