Patients navigating the complex process of discharge from hospitals in England often encounter inconsistent levels of support and care. Systemic pressures to free up hospital beds can lead to premature discharges, where patients are sent home without appropriate care arrangements in place and without meaningful opportunities to participate in decisions affecting their own care journey. This in turn compromises patient safety. These systemic failures frequently manifest as testimonial injustice, that is, where patients’ accounts, concerns, and expertise about their own conditions are dismissed, discounted, or ignored entirely during the discharge process. This chapter uses the concept of regulatory liminal space—the gap between different regulatory bodies and actors—to better understand and identify the issue of testimonial injustice where it arises in these contexts and show its consequences in the move from hospital to home. It goes on to propose a role for the Patient Safety Commissioner for England to help navigate these transitions, reduce testimonial injustice and improve regulatory responses to enhance healthcare safety and regulatory legitimacy.

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Testimonial Injustice and the Regulatory Liminal Space of Hospital Discharges

  • Victoria L Moore

摘要

Patients navigating the complex process of discharge from hospitals in England often encounter inconsistent levels of support and care. Systemic pressures to free up hospital beds can lead to premature discharges, where patients are sent home without appropriate care arrangements in place and without meaningful opportunities to participate in decisions affecting their own care journey. This in turn compromises patient safety. These systemic failures frequently manifest as testimonial injustice, that is, where patients’ accounts, concerns, and expertise about their own conditions are dismissed, discounted, or ignored entirely during the discharge process. This chapter uses the concept of regulatory liminal space—the gap between different regulatory bodies and actors—to better understand and identify the issue of testimonial injustice where it arises in these contexts and show its consequences in the move from hospital to home. It goes on to propose a role for the Patient Safety Commissioner for England to help navigate these transitions, reduce testimonial injustice and improve regulatory responses to enhance healthcare safety and regulatory legitimacy.