Studies in health technology and informatics
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2013
Clinical handover improvement in context: exploring tensions between user-centred approaches and standardisation.
User-centred approaches in the development and evaluation of health information systems promote the importance of involving users and understanding their social contexts to optimise the quality and safety of these systems for patient care. Simultaneously, the standardisation of clinical practices has also been advocated to improve the quality and safety of patient care. In the context of clinical handover improvement within three different departments in one tertiary teaching hospital, this paper highlights the potential for tensions between these two approaches and explores their implications. ⋯ This led to the project developing distinct minimum data sets for each of the three departments that posed challenges for efforts to standardise handover practices across the hospital and for building an integrated information system. While on the one hand accommodating unique departmental user requirements was valuable, they revealed the potential for the introduction of quality and safety risks at the organisational level. To resolve these tensions, the project team developed an approach called flexible standardisation that has now been embedded in Australia' s national guidelines on clinical handover improvement.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2013
Using the intubating laryngeal tube in a manikin - user evaluation of a new airway device.
This work describes the use of a new intubation device, the intubating laryngeal tube (iLTA) as developed by Boedeker. Emergency Department residents and staff from the University of Nebraska Medical Center performed intubations using the Laerdal Difficult Airway Trainer Manikin(TM). The participants' perceived value of the intubating laryngeal tube as well as its efficacy in intubation performance were measured and found to be highly favorable.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2013
Analysis of the interface and data transfer from ICU to normal wards in a German University Hospital.
Typically general wards and intensive care units (ICU) have very different labor organizations, structures and IT-systems in Germany. There is a need for coordination, because of the different working arrangements. Our team investigated the interface between ICU and general ward and especially the respective information transfer in the University hospital in Erlangen (Bavaria, Germany). ⋯ In a second step, we investigate the requirements of data transmission in expert interviews. A data transfer concept from the perspective of the nurses and physicians was developed and we formulated recommendations for improvements of process and communication for this interface. Finally the data transfer concept was evaluated by the respondents.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2013
Nursing critical patient severity classification system predicts outcomes in patients admitted to surgical intensive care units: use of data from clinical data repository.
To examine the Critical Patient Severity Classification System (CPSCS) recorded by nurses to predict ICU and hospital lengths of stay and mortality, data were drawn from patients admitted to 2 surgical intensive care units (SICUs) at a university hospital in Seoul, South Korea in 2010. This retrospective study used a large data set retrieved from the Clinical Data Repository System. ⋯ The CPSCS was a statistically significant predictor of ICU and hospital LOS and mortality when patients' demographic characteristics were adjusted. In the era of emphasis on using big data, analysis of nursing assessment data should be evaluated to show importance of nursing contribution to predict patients' clinical outcomes.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2013
International priorities for research in nursing informatics for patient care.
The Nursing Informatics International Research Network (NIIRN) is a group of experts who are collaborating on the development of internationally relevant research programs for nursing informatics. In this paper we outline key findings of a survey exploring international research priorities for nursing informatics. The survey was available online during May-August 2012. ⋯ The two most highly ranked areas of importance for research were development of systems to provide real time feedback to nurses and assessment of the impact of HIT on nursing care and patient outcomes. The lowest ranked research topics were theory development and integrating genomic data into clinical information systems. The identification of these priorities provides a basis for future international collaborative research in the field of nursing informatics.