Nursing Data Quality

There are infinite ways that nursing data quality relates to decision support. Some of the most obvious would be evaluation of wound care management, rate of healing and appropriate selection and utilization of wound products. Nursing care is tied to quicker discharge from hospitals and educational materials are vital to the success of patients remaining healthy once home. The tools available in most decision support systems include patient education materials that are easily readable and provide support for medications and chronic disease management. Many of the printed materials have contact information for organizations that provide free support groups and comprehensive educational literature that prove helpful when patients are feeling better and more interested in their conditions.

Guidelines, algorithms, protocols, first line therapies are among the many items nurses can find in clinical decision support systems. One can tap into the evidence based plans and read definitions, epidemiology, predisposing considerations, diagnostic testing, and treatment plans using tools that didn’t exist only a few years ago. Patients can demonstrate better outcomes and become more fully partnered with the decisions of providers. For the first time in history, data from research can be obtained quickly and can guide decisions of a medical home team. Decisions then are not as prone to intuition or sequencing events.

Reconcile Nursing Heuristics

It would seem imperative to draw not only from nursing heuristics, but to continue asking for evidence with an open mind that the algorithms of today may be different from the ones deemed most effective tomorrow. Medicine and health contain many subjective parameters and one must consider the practice of medicine and experience of health is much like a living art form. One needs develop awareness of the patient’s bias, anchors, and intuitions. No different from the health care provider, both bring bias elements into the equation.

There are many judgments made based on intuitive input just as Dr. Kahneman mentioned regarding the nurse who told her father that he was going to the emergency department immediately. There he was identified with cardiac demise and she later realized that it was the color change in his face that prompted her to bring him to the emergency department. There is a time for intuitive decisions. There are also times when slower controlled reasoning and careful statistical analysis will produce a better outcome and with tools available via technological support systems, this process has rapidly improved.

Readings Influence Perception of Decision Making

The readings make one introspective related to intuition and heuristics and cognitive biases. In the video lecture Dr. Kahneman illustrated how a single word evokes responses that are similar across an audience with immediate accuracy. In his article he used number sets to demonstrated that people anchor and make adjustments that are not always accurate based on intuitive estimates, much like the video drawing of a man walking into a tunnel that gave the illusion of bigger size when and all drawings of the man were identical sized.

In the video, the intuition system 1 which was quick, automatic, with slow learning, associative coherence, and effortless seemed of value. The intuitive assumptions were particularly significant when related to heat under the boots of a fireman and the need to abandon the fire immediately. It would seem that there is value in recognition of intuition and the skill acquired. Then he compared it with the reasoning system2, slow, controlled, flexible, and effortful and rule governed to draw conclusion that one cannot function well without the other. Reasoning collects data and make judgments and draws conclusions that may be quite different from those derived from intuition. In his article, one concluding comment was that statistical principles are not learned from everyday experiences. Another conclusion was that people usually do not detect the biases in their judgments.

Augment Learning

After reading the preferences, personal potential and related tasks I am inclined to turn on music while I sit and read the computer tasks. That might actually improve my tolerance or joy of the online educational journey. I wish there was another person in central Arkansas who could sit at a computer next to me as I struggle to learn in a medium that feels foreign. I will indeed plan time to phone a friend or take a walk in the neighborhood and mentally prepare for my next computer challenge.

As an educator I am aware of students need to engage in their own learning. I plan classes to incorporate a variety of senses and styles and know that if they do not engage every six minutes, they are lost and may as well take a nap. I wonder what might happen if there was low soft music in the background for classroom settings? Application games from Soft Chalk, case studies that they read and respond, quizzes, video clips, ever present PowerPoint on Blackboard, and guest speakers are some of the tools used today that I find helpful.

Multiple Intelligence Preferences: Strengths

Having taken a number of learning style inventories, I am not surprised to see that I am an auditory learner above all other preferences. In this particular tool, musical scored highest followed closely with linguistic then interpersonal and intrapersonal. I love learning most of all by hearing and being involved with other people. I spend time next thinking about what I have learned and meditating of the value and application of learning. Not far behind the auditory and interaction with people is kinesthetic learning. I abhor sitting endlessly and find excuses to get up and move around, especially when faced with learning from a computer screen!