Bringing Mum home from hospital: what week one actually looks like

The hospital phone call that says "Mum can come home tomorrow" is one of those moments that is supposed to feel like good news. For most families, it feels like the start of a problem they have not had time to plan for. The bag is still on the ward, the discharge letter has not been written yet, and someone has to be there to receive her by lunch.

What follows is what we, and a fair few families we have spoken to, wish we had known going in.

The discharge letter says one thing. Real life says another

The letter will list medications, follow-up appointments, and a paragraph that says "patient is medically fit for discharge". That last phrase does a lot of work. Medically fit usually means stable enough to leave the bed. It does not mean ready to live alone again, ready to cook a meal, ready to manage the stairs, or ready to know which of the eight new tablets are with food and which are not.

Treat the letter as the start of the conversation, not the end of it.

What to sort before discharge day, ideally

If you can get even half a day's notice, these are the things that pay back the time spent:

• The medications list. Print it. Take a photo of it. Stick it on the fridge. New tablets are the number one cause of readmission in the first month.
• A named ward contact. Get a name and a direct number, not just "the ward". When something is unclear on day three, this saves you hours.
• Follow-up appointment dates and locations. Often there is a physio or outpatient clinic in the next ten days. Put them on the family calendar before you leave the ward.
• Any equipment that has been ordered. Bed rails, a commode, a Zimmer frame, a hoist. Find out who is delivering it and when. Half of post-discharge equipment shows up later than it should.
• Care package details, if any. Who is the agency, what are the visit times, what should the carers be doing? Read the actual care plan, not just the agency name.

Day one: do less than you think

The temptation on the first day home is to crack on. Reorganise, restock, do the food shop, do all the laundry that built up while she was in. Try not to. Day one is for one thing: helping her settle into a space that has felt unfamiliar for a fortnight.

Make sure she is comfortable. Tea, a blanket, the remote within reach. Help her find where the new medications are kept. Check she can get to the loo in the night without obstacle. That is the day.

The week-one rota: write it down before discharge

This is the bit families consistently underestimate. If you have siblings or a partner, sketch out who is coming on which day, before Mum gets home. Not a vague "I will pop in", a list with names and times. We use one shared family calendar with morning, afternoon and evening slots, but a piece of paper on the fridge is fine too. The point is the gaps become visible.

What worked for us in week one:

• Two visits a day for the first three days, even if they are short.
• One person on call overnight (just phone-on, not staying).
• Daily check-ins by phone or app from whichever sibling is not visiting that day, so she has heard from someone every day.
• One designated person to deal with the medications, so nobody is second-guessing what she has and has not taken.

The dip on day three or four

Most older patients do reasonably well on day one and two, then take a step back somewhere between day three and day five. This is normal. It is partly the anaesthetic still working its way out, partly the unfamiliar exhaustion of being upright again, partly the realisation that hospital is over and recovery has started.

If you have only planned for the first two days, this dip is when families panic and someone ends up taking emergency leave. Build the dip into your rota. Day three and four are the days that benefit most from a longer, calmer visit.

When to ring 111 or 999 in week one

Most hospitals send a leaflet with a list. Read it before you bin it. In the absence of one, the basics:

• Confusion that is new or worse than before, especially in someone who was clear-headed pre-admission. Ring 111 same day.
• Wound site getting redder, more painful, leaking. 111, or GP if same-day available.
• Chest pain, shortness of breath, signs of stroke. 999.
• Falls. Even a small one. 111 to triage, follow with the GP.
• New problems with passing urine, or with bowel movements, in the first week. GP same week.

The conversation with the GP, in week two

By the time you are a week in, you will have noticed at least one thing that is not quite right or not quite addressed. Book a GP review at the end of week one or early in week two. Bring a written list. Doctors get five minutes. A list is worth ten.

How siblings share without overlapping

The classic mistake here is everyone ringing Mum to check on her, separately, and her getting four calls a day asking the same questions. Pick one person who is the daily check-in, then everyone else trusts that and steps back.

A shared calendar makes this work because everyone can see who has spoken to her today without ringing themselves to find out. Coordinating care with siblings without arguments goes into the mechanics in more detail.

The bit nobody warns you about: sleep

The first week home, the family will not sleep well either. The brain wants to keep checking. The trick is to agree that one named person is "on" for any given night, and the others switch their phone off. Otherwise everyone is half-listening and nobody is properly rested.

Where Getwello fits

The first week home is exactly the sort of period where having a shared calendar and a daily check-in stops the family quietly burning out. The calendar means nobody overlaps visits and nobody assumes someone else has it covered. The daily check-in means Mum has one button to tap each morning to say she is well, so we can stop the "is she up yet?" texts between siblings at 7am. See how the daily check-in works, or read our piece on first steps when an older parent's health suddenly changes for the wider picture.