Research Interest - Patient Discharge From Hospital

Liz has an international reputation for her patient discharge from hospital research, specifically Criteria Led Discharge (CLD) through innovations in clinical practice, co-design and qualitative enquiry.  CLD is an intervention in the patient discharge process which has the potential to bring the time of patient discharge earlier in the day, to create timely bed capacity and improve in-hospital patient flow. 

Clinical Application:

Liz has 34 years post registered nursing experience, with 20 years expertise as a Consultant Nurse in acute medicine.  This challenging environment formed the impetus to understand how to safely expedite patient discharge from hospital and improve patient flow. She has keenly developed educational courses for nurse development and has a broad range of interests. To date, Liz has published 130 articles and is the sole Editor for 2 patient discharge textbooks with multi-disciplinary contributors. This body of work has been integrated into national discharge policies across England, Ireland, Australia and Singapore. 

In partnership with NHS Midlands, (2021-3), Liz pioneered the concept, practical development and feasibility testing of a point prevalence survey tool (across 22 hospitals) for healthcare staff to identify the opportunities and characteristics of patients suitable for CLD in different clinical settings.   Citation here:

Lees-Deutsch L, Young R, Brangwin, E, et al (2025) Development of a Survey Tool to Demonstrate Opportunities and Characteristics of patients suitable for criteria led discharge from hospital: a multi-centre study with participatory co-design BMC Health Services Research. BMC Health Services Research. 25:1492 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-025-13734-1 

She is currently leading a team of researchers at Coventry University to update her criteria led discharge, Systematic Review (2019) to be published 2026, registration details here:

Lees-Deutsch, L, Emma Brangwin, Rosslyn Young, Bridget O'Connell and Lewko A. A Systematic Review of Criteria Led Discharge: Patient Safety and Satisfaction; Length of Stay and Facilitators for Implementation. PROSPERO 2025 CRD420251047744. Available from https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/view/CRD420251047744.

NIHR SSR CR21: Hidden Costs of Hospital Discharge - Co-Investigator. This study is led by Birmingham University completing in 2026.

Clinical Academic work (2014 – present)

Doctoral: Liz completed her PhD at the University of Manchester funded through a highly competitive and prestigious NIHR Clinical Doctoral Research Fellowship to produce a portfolio study NIHR 10101. Her thesis reported 'how patients are risk assessed for discharge from acute hospital care'. Liz published a Scoping Review of Global Discharge Policies (2016) which informed NHS England Principles for Discharging Patients (2019). 

Post Doctoral: Liz completed a fellowship at The University of Birmingham funded through a HEE award, Supervised by Professor Annie Topping.  Liz wrote up further outputs from her PhD – Patient and Carer Experiences of Transfer to a Hospital Discharge Lounge (2020). She also co-developed a process for patients to be discharged using criteria led discharge with healthcare staff in acute medicine, citation here:

Lees-Deutsch L, Jackson J, Balaji A, Topping A. Developing a Process for Criteria-Led Discharge: Selection of Patients for Efficient and Effective Discharge (SPEED). J Nurs Care Qual. 2020 Apr/Jun;35(2):140-146. doi: 10.1097/NCQ.0000000000000423. PMID: 31306239

Life Fellowship: Liz was awarded a Life Fellowship of the Society for Acute Medicine in 2016 for her 'outstanding contribution to multidisciplinary staff development.' She continues to be an active member of the Society for Acute Medicine and presents regularly at their National and International Conferences, lastly in September 2025.

Collaborations: She was invited to collaborate with the Emergency Care Implementation Support Team, now GIRFT - Get it Right First Time (formerly NHS England and NHS Improvement).  Her close working partnerships ensured a larger platform to translate her findings across the UK.  At the end of her post-doctoral work, she wrote the national guidance to implement criteria led discharge and a standard operating protocol - used by many NHS trusts to guide the implementation of their CLD work.

Senior Research Leader Development: Liz was awarded a place on the NIHR 70@70 Nurse and Midwife Research Leaders Programme (2019-2022), where she focused on developing the organisational capacity of registered nurses to undertake research. This work has resulted in many formative constructs and research methods she uses presently - such as Critically Appraised Topic Groups and Publishing Master Classes.

Associate Professor: In October 2021, Liz joined University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust in the Centre for Care Excellence in a joint clinical academic role with Coventry University.  

Professor for Nursing Practice: In December 2023, Liz commenced a new role within the Centre for Care Excellence, where she continues to develop her patient discharge research programme.

Research Interests:

1. Patient Discharge from Hospital (quality and timeliness)

• • Risk Assessment for Patient Discharge
  • Criteria Led Discharge
  • Patient Flow

2. Professional Nurse Advocates and nurse wellbeing

3. Patient Perpetrated Workplace Violence

4. Acute Medicine Nursing, career development

I have developed three PhD Studentships with Coventry University CHC, to align with my research programmes, namely:

1. Criteria Led Discharge from Hospital. Funded by NHS England (ECIST); Coventry University Stipend, University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust (R&D Department).  Sep 2023.
2. Patient and Relative Perpetrated Violence against Staff: Post Intervention Strategies. Funded by Clive Richards Foundation. May 2023.
3. Patient Risk Assessment for Discharge from Hospital. Lecturer at Coventry University.  Started January 2024.
4. Professional Nurse Advocate Programme: Quality Improvement Work. Funded by NHS England and Stipend. Commenced May 2024.