A major nursing role in rehabilitation is patient teaching. Through education, the patient is armed with knowledge that enables him or her to reenter community life prepared to be as independent as possible. The teaching in a rehabilitation facility should be evaluated continually to assure its ability to meet patients' needs. This article describes a study in which phone calls made by patients after their discharge were assessed to determine whether knowledge deficits had prompted the calls. The results were used by the hospital nursing staff to make changes in their patient teaching.

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receiving antibiotics was conducted. The pre and post antibiotic IPOS scores for pain, breathlessness, confusion and 'other' symptoms were analysed using a paired T test facilitated by SPSS V11. Results The most common use of antibiotics was documented to control 'other' symptoms (n=16) not covered by IPOS. The most common 'other' symptom recorded were fever (n=7), but also included cough, incontinence and drowsiness. Antibiotics caused an average reduction in the IPOS scores for pain of 0.45, CI 1.49 to-1.28 (p 0.11). Breathlessness reduced by 0.16 (CI 1.44 to-0.60, p 0.42). Confusion reduced by 0.26 (CI 1.13 to-0.78, p 0.17). Other symptoms improved by 0.65 (CI-0.11 to-1.18 p 0.02). Conclusion Although some patients did report improvements, the findings of this audit suggest that antibiotics may not affect patients' IPOS reported symptoms. This prompts reflection on both the use of antibiotics and the implementation of IPOS in the hospices. The potential clinical and research implications of utilising IPOS to evaluate the effectiveness of specific palliative care interventions warrants further research.

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