Discharge is rushed, it usually happens when you are already tired, and a lot of information moves at once. That is the system's problem, not yours, and it is worth slowing down for.
Discharge tends to happen fast, often in the middle of the afternoon, and often on the day you least expected it. You will be handed paper and told someone will call. Medications are the thing most likely to get muddled in that handover, so ten minutes spent on them is well spent, even when everyone around you seems to be in a hurry.
You are allowed to say: I am not ready to take her home until I understand three things. Nobody will think worse of you for it.
Ask for it as those three lists, not as a single sheet. A discharge list that shows both the old and the new dose of the same drug is how people end up taking both.
A bad answer sounds like: "It's all on the discharge summary." Read it back to them out loud and ask them to confirm each change.
You will be asked this many times over the following weeks, by pharmacists, home health, and every new clinician. Getting the sentence from the team who treated her beats reconstructing it later.
Two different lists. Without them, everything feels like it might be the emergency, which is exhausting to live with. Having the two lists is what lets you rest between them.
A bad answer sounds like: "If you're worried, bring her back in." Press for specifics: which symptoms, and how fast.
A name and a number. Not a department. Discharge instructions routinely route people to a switchboard that cannot help.
Ordered is not the same as arranged. If nobody has called within the window they give you, you now know to chase it rather than assume it is coming.
A bad answer sounds like: "It's been referred." Ask who, and by when.
A raised toilet seat, a walker, a shower chair, oxygen, a bed on the ground floor. This is much easier to solve before you leave than at nine that night.
It determines whether you can go to work on Monday, and it is the question that decides your next two weeks. Ask for it plainly and write the answer down.
Follow-up within a week is what keeps people from being readmitted. If nobody has booked it, that is your job now and it is better to know.
Getting records after the fact takes weeks. Ten minutes at the desk now saves that.
If the day gets away from you and you only manage one thing, do the medication reconciliation: put the list she was on before next to the list she is going home with, and ask someone to walk you through every difference.
Take a photo of every page before you leave the building.
If the answers you get are thinner than you wanted, that is not something you did wrong. You asked. You are allowed to ask the same things again tomorrow, of whoever picks up the phone.
These are questions to take with you, not medical advice, and nothing here is specific to your situation. Written by a family caregiver from time spent in these rooms. If something here does not fit your appointment, skip it.