The Glasses Stayed in the Drawer: Check the Belongings Bag Before the Car Leaves

Before the car pulls in, your parent's own things need to be accounted for as carefully as the paperwork. Glasses, hearing aids, dentures, a phone and charger, a cane or walker that belongs to them, and the clothes they came in all tend to come home in a bag. That bag is easy to lose track of, especially on the last morning when the room is full of people and nobody has written down what went in.

Local option: New Plan Care gives families in the St. Louis area in-home help so a parent can stay home: companionship, help with bathing and dressing, meals, and overnight care. Call (314) 405-0887.

How you know you have the problem

Watch for a few plain signs. Your parent asks for their glasses to read the discharge sheet and cannot find them. The hearing aids are in a cup on the tray, or nowhere. The phone is on the nightstand with a dead battery and the charger is not in the bag. The shoes they arrived in are not in the closet. Any one of these means the list has not been checked against the room.

What to do before you sign out

Ask the nurse for the belongings record the unit uses when it bags personal items, or ask who keeps it. Read it out loud against what you hold in your hand. Then open every drawer, check the closet, the bedside table, the tray, and the bathroom sink. Look in the cup and the case for dentures and hearing aids. Put the glasses case in a place your parent can reach.

If the hospital stored anything in a locker or a bag at the desk, ask where it is, who signs it out, and whether you need an ID or a copy of the discharge paper to get it. Ask whether the unit has a lost-and-found and how to reach it after you leave. Write the number on the discharge folder.

If something is missing

Say what is missing to the nurse before you leave the floor, not in the parking lot. Give the item, the color, the case, and where it was last seen. Ask the nurse to note it on the record. If the item is a hearing aid or glasses your parent needs to read or hear the plan, ask the team to hold the discharge talk until it is found or until a substitute is in hand. You can also ask the team which local eye or hearing offices can handle a replacement order, and ask what your parent's plan pays for before you buy anything.

For the rest of the week, keep a single bag for these items at home. Write the list on the inside flap, and check it each night the same way you checked it at the hospital. The Day 0 to Day 14 After Discharge page has the checklist for the first two weeks, and it includes this one.