Prevalence and Outcomes of Night-Time Discharges from Intensive Care Unit of a Teaching Hospital

This prospective study determined the prevalence of night-time discharges from intensive care unit (ICU), compared the patient outcomes between night-time and daytime ICU discharges and identified factors affecting the patient outcomes. We included alive discharged ICU patients between 1st December 2020 to 31st October 2021 and excluded those who were issued do-not-resuscitate order or readmitted after 72 hours of ICU discharge. We grouped the patients into night-time discharges, which occurred between 1700 and 0759 the next day, or daytime discharges, which occurred between 0800 and 1659 of the same day. We analysed data of 205 patients which showed 116 patients (56.6%) we discharged at night-time. Patient outcomes were similar when we compared them with the timing of ICU discharges. Among the night-time discharges, the readmission rates were affected by the availability of post ICU follow up (p=0.002); the rates of hospital stays longer than 10 days after ICU discharge were affected by the need for bed mobilisation to accommodate acute ICU admission (p=0.021); the in-hospital mortality rates were affected by poorly controlled infection source (p=0.004), need for bed mobilisation (p=0.001) and availability of post ICU follow-up (p=0.01). In conclusion, the timing of ICU discharges did not affect the patient outcomes.