Improving the human readability of Arden Syntax medical logic modules using a concept-oriented terminology and object-oriented programming expressions.
(9/49)
Medical logic modules are a procedural representation for sharing task-specific knowledge for decision support systems. Based on the premise that clinicians may perceive object-oriented expressions as easier to read than procedural rules in Arden Syntax-based medical logic modules, we developed a method for improving the readability of medical logic modules. Two approaches were applied: exploiting the concept-oriented features of the Medical Entities Dictionary and building an executable Java program to replace Arden Syntax procedural expressions. The usability evaluation showed that 66% of participants successfully mapped all Arden Syntax rules to Java methods. These findings suggest that these approaches can play an essential role in the creation of human readable medical logic modules and can potentially increase the number of clinical experts who are able to participate in the creation of medical logic modules. Although our approaches are broadly applicable, we specifically discuss the relevance to concept-oriented nursing terminologies and automated processing of task-specific nursing knowledge. (+info)
Health Outcomes for Better Information and Care (HOBIC): integrating patient outcome information into nursing undergraduate curricula.
(10/49)
Nursing-sensitive outcomes provide common information across sectors, thus eliminating duplication that frequently occurs as individuals move across settings. These outcomes also facilitate increased trust among colleagues and support common understandings of patient care needs, thus enhancing continuity of care. Outcomes-oriented information is also likely to increase patient safety and improve overall quality of care. Shared standards and data support consistent decision-making, as nursing decisions can be tracked back over time to assess patient care outcomes. Consequently, nurses will have the means to determine the impact of their interventions on patient outcomes. At the same time, adoption of common approaches to patient assessment leads to greater professional accountability and moves nursing care from a task orientation to an outcomes focus. For administrators, such improvements in monitoring and evaluating patient outcomes translate into improvements in efficiencies and effectiveness, thus providing a return on investment in implementing these outcomes within their agency. For nurses, integration and utilization of outcomes information increases the visibility and significance of their decision-making and patient care. Together with patients, nurses can utilize the outcomes information to make evidence-based decisions and advocate for appropriate care. At an aggregate level, the use of outcomes information creates a continuous feedback loop that is essential to ensuring evidence-based care and the best possible patient outcomes, not only for individuals, but also for families, communities and populations. Outcomes-oriented care provides a gateway for transforming the way we care for patients; puts safe, ethical, high-quality care for patients first; embodies the principles of evidence-based practice; ensures that the value of nursing is clearly understood within the larger system; and ensures that the requirements for measurability and accountability can be achieved. This journey is continuous and is being expanded to engage all other health disciplines in understanding and documenting their contributions to patient care, both as individual practitioners and as members of a healthcare team. Preparing nursing students in an outcomes approach will facilitate systemwide adoption of HOBIC patient outcomes over time and provide a means to determine the impact of nursing care on our patients. (+info)
Guideposts to the future--an agenda for nursing informatics.
(11/49)
As new directions and priorities emerge in health care, nursing informatics leaders must prepare to guide the profession appropriately. To use an analogy, where a road bends or changes directions, guideposts indicate how drivers can stay on course. The AMIA Nursing Informatics Working Group (NIWG) produced this white paper as the product of a meeting convened: 1) to describe anticipated nationwide changes in demographics, health care quality, and health care informatics; 2) to assess the potential impact of genomic medicine and of new threats to society; 3) to align AMIA NIWG resources with emerging priorities; and 4) to identify guideposts in the form of an agenda to keep the NIWG on course in light of new opportunities. The anticipated societal changes provide opportunities for nursing informatics. Resources described below within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the National Committee for Health and Vital Statistics (NCVHS) can help to align AMIA NIWG with emerging priorities. The guideposts consist of priority areas for action in informatics, nursing education, and research. Nursing informatics professionals will collaborate as full participants in local, national, and international efforts related to the guideposts in order to make significant contributions that empower patients and providers for safer health care. (+info)
Mutual enhancement of diverse terminologies.
(12/49)
The purpose of this study was to map the North American Nursing Diagnosis Association (NANDA) nursing diagnoses to the International Classification for Nursing Practice Version 1.0 (ICNP) and to compare the resulting representations and relationships to those within SNOMED Clinical Terms (CT). Independent reviewers reached agreement on 25 (i.e. 64%) of the 39 parent-child relationships identified via the mappings between NANDA entities. Other parent-child relationships were more questionable and are in need of further discussion. This work does not seek to promote one terminology over any other. Rather, this collaborative effort has the potential to mutually enhance all three terminologies involved in the study: ICNP, SNOMED CT and NANDA. In doing so it provides an example of the type of collaborative effort that is needed to facilitate the development of tools to support interoperability at a global level. (+info)
User-customizing HIS interface by light programming tool: the case of redesigning the nursing Kardex with InfoPath2003.
(13/49)
Due to lack of IT resources, the End-User Computing strategy seems useful for the front-end users to develop and customize their own information application. We taught the nurses to use the InfoPath 2003 to design their own card-filing Kardex system and observed promising results. (+info)
Top barriers and facilitators to nurses' PDA adoption.
(14/49)
A web-based survey was employed to identify barriers and facilitators to nurses' PDA adoption. Based on the top barriers and facilitators identified, implications for PDA manufacturers and hospitals are discussed. (+info)
Mapping selected general literature of international nursing.
(15/49)
OBJECTIVES: This study, part of a wider project to map the literature of nursing, identifies core journals cited in non-US nursing journals and determines the extent of their coverage by indexing services. METHODS: Four general English-language journals were analyzed for format types and publication dates. Core titles were identified and nine bibliographic databases were scanned for indexing coverage. RESULTS: Findings show that 57.5% (13,391/23,271) of the cited references from the 4 core journals were to journal articles, 27.8% (6,471/23,271) to books, 9.5% (2,208/23,271) to government documents, 4.9% (1,131/23,271) to miscellaneous sources, and less than 1% (70/23,271) to Internet resources. Eleven journals produced one-third of the citations; the next third included 146 journals, followed by a dispersion of 1,622 titles. PubMed received the best database coverage scores, followed by CINAHL and Science Citation Index. None of the databases provided complete coverage of all 11 core titles. CONCLUSION: The four source journals contain a diverse group of cited references. The currency of citations to government documents makes these journals a good source for regulatory and legislative awareness. Nurses consult nursing and biomedical journals and must search both nursing and biomedical databases to cover the literature. (+info)
Mapping the literature of public health and community nursing.
(16/49)
OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to identify the journals most cited in public health and community nursing and to determine which databases provide the most thorough indexing access to these journals. This study is part of the Medical Library Association Nursing and Allied Health Resource Section's project to map the nursing literature. METHODS: Two source journals of public health nursing, Public Health Nursing and Journal of Community Health Nursing, were subjected to citation analysis based on Bradford's Law of Scattering. RESULTS: A group of 18 titles comprised 34% (1,387) of the 4,100 citations, another third were dispersed among 104 journal titles, with the remaining third scattered across 703 journal titles. The core 18 journals included both of the source journals, 3 major public health journals, and several general medical and nursing journals. CONCLUSIONS: PubMed provided the best overall indexing coverage for the journals, followed by Social Science Citation Index and CINAHL. In terms of source journal coverage, several databases provided complete coverage for the journal Public Health Nursing, while only EMBASE provided complete coverage for the Journal of Community Health Nursing. (+info)