Inpatient doctors, including myself, have a tendency to say a patient is “going home” when we mean they’re being discharged.
When someone points out that the patient is actually going to rehab or SNF, we say “oops, right.”
🧵1/5

But at least for myself… I don’t think I’ve tried hard enough to avoid that verbal mistake.
And I want to, because it’s not actually only a verbal mistake. It reflects a mindset - a very clinician-centered one, of our individual work being completed.
2/5

It shows that we are not attuned enough to the patient’s experience, their ongoing illness/recovery process, all that still happens once the patient is discharged, and how different home vs a facility may be for some people.
3/5

The latter – not fully appreciating the benefits AND downsides of being in a facility – also factors into our inadequate counseling and joint decision-making about what actually WOULD be best for them, when that decision is raised by a PT recommendation.
4/5

Then there's the insensitivity of "going home" when the patient doesn't have housing.
So, a resolution: if someone is going home, I’ll say they’re going home.
If not, I’ll say where they’ll be going, or at least use a more generic “leaving” or “discharging.”
5/5