Why Do Patients Leave against Medical Advice? Reasons, Consequences, Prevention, and Interventions

Background: A patient decides to leave the hospital against medical advice. Is this an erratic eccentric behavior of the patient, or a gap in the quality of care provided by the hospital? With a significant and increasing prevalence of up to 1–2% of all hospital admissions, leaving against medical advice affects both the patient and the healthcare provider. We hereby explore this persistent problem in the healthcare system. We searched Medline and PubMed within the last 10 years, using the keywords “discharge against medical advice,” “DAMA,” “leave against medical advice,” and “AMA.” We retrospectively reviewed 49 articles in our project. Ishikawa fishbone root cause analysis (RCA) was employed to explore reasons for leaving against medical advice (AMA). This report presents the results of the RCA and highlights the consequences of discharge against medical advice (DAMA). In addition, the article explores preventive strategies, as well as interventions to ameliorate leaving AMA.