Hospital discharge and the temporal regulation of bodies

This article explores the temporal interface between hospital and home-based regimes of care, focusing on patients' discharge home from specialist care units. Following an outline of the temporal imperatives that distinguish hospital discharge policy in the UK, secondary analysis of qualitative data is used to examine the temporal organisation of discharge procedures and patients' and informal carers' experiences of the transfer of care from hospital to home. Tensions in the institutational time frames of hospital and community-based services and the everyday time frames of patients and carers are highlighted, together with the implications for policy and practice in this area.