BY DAY 6 OF WEEK 1
Respond to at least two of your colleagues * on two different days, asking questions to help clarify the scenario and application of data, or offering additional/alternative ideas for the application of nursing informatics principles.
RESPONSE 1
I work in a small rural hospital that serves a large area. Our hospital has struggled to keep up with the service demand, and the staff is overworked. The hospital administration has been trying to find ways to improve efficiency and make better use of our resources. One idea that has been floated is to use data to help us decide how to allocate our resources (Tripathy & Swarnkar, 2020). For example, we could use data to track how often patients use the emergency room, how often they are admitted to the hospital, and what treatments they receive. This data could help us decide which areas of our hospital are busiest and how we can improve our services.
We would also use data to make decisions about staffing. For example, we could track how many patients we can treat in a day or week without calling in extra staff. This data could help us decide which nurses to hire or whether we need to expand our hours. This is just one example of how data could be used to improve the efficiency and quality of services at our hospital (Tripathy & Swarnkar, 2020). There are many other possibilities, and data could play a role in almost every decision we make.
Also, hospitals always look for ways to improve their services and save money. By using data, hospitals can make better decisions about how they should spend their resources and track the effects of their policies and programs (Carter-Templeton & Sensmeier, 2019). For example, hospitals might use data to identify patients waiting the longest for care. This information could be used to create better patient care plans or to allocate resources more efficiently.
Likewise, hospitals might use data to measure the effectiveness of their policies and programs. This information could help them improve the quality of services they provide to patients. Data can also be used to track patient satisfaction with hospital services (Carter-Templeton & Sensmeier, 2019). By understanding what patients want and how they feel about the hospital's care, hospitals can make improvements that will benefit everyone involved.
References
Carter-Templeton, H., & Sensmeier, J. (2019). The Value and Impact of the Alliance for Nursing Informatics Emerging Leaders Program. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 37(12), 612–614.
Tripathy, S., & Swarnkar, T. (2020). Application of Big Data Problem-Solving Framework in Healthcare Sector—Recent Advancement. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, 819–826.
Class Response 2
In the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), many patients require mechanical ventilation and sedation. While a patient is sedated and on mechanical ventilation, it is proven that performing a sedation vacation daily reduces ventilator days and improves patient outcomes (Sharma et al, 2021). A sedation vacation is the act of stopping medications such as narcotics and sedatives while a patient is on a mechanical ventilator in order to assess whether or not a patient will awaken and meet the protocol for extubation (CIBS Center, n.d.). Recently in the ICU where I work, management has informed us that nurses are to be performing sedation vacations every 12 hours, instead of the regular daily sedation vacations that we are accustomed to. The recent change to performing sedation vacations every 12 hours instead of every 24 hours is an attempt by management and the hospital to further decrease ventilator days and improve patient outcomes.
In order to compare which sedation vacation approach works best, data from the previous daily sedation vacation method must be accessed. This data should include how many ventilator days patient’s averaged using this approach vs how many ventilator days patient’s averaged using the more frequent 2 times a day sedation vacation approach. The data can be easily accessed and tracked through the hospital charting system, where nurses are required to chart whether or not a patient failed or passed the sedation vacation trial. After a few months of consistent sedation vacation trials being 2 times a day, data from this method can then be compared to the 1 time daily method to assess which one truly benefits mechanically ventilated patient’s more.
A nursing leader assessing this data would have to see which method of sedation vacation reduces ventilator days and improves patient outcomes. Then, depending on whether or not one method works better than the other, can a decision be made by hospital management on which method to continue practicing. In order to obtain accurate results, the new twice a day method must be implemented for at least a few months to gain a large enough sample size.
References
Both sat and SBT. CIBS Center. (n.d.). Retrieved November 28, 2022, from https://www.icudelirium.org/medical-professionals/both-sat-and-sbt
DJ;, S. S. H. M. F. V. I. I. I. (2021). Sedation vacation in the ICU. National Center for Biotechnology Information. Retrieved November 28, 2022, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30020699/
