Homework: Clinical Decision Support Systems or Data Mining
Option I: Clinical Decision Support Systems
Clinical decision support systems (CDSS) are used to help guide clinical decisions for care. At the high end, CDSS's can facilitate diagnosis of conditions. Most of us see a CDSS in terms of ‘hard stops' in the charting where until certain things are documented you cannot proceed in the charting.
o Describe how a CDSS is used at your facility.
o Explain how a CDSS might be useful in supporting high quality, safe patient care.
o If your clinical area does not use a CDSS, describe how one could be used in practice.
Option II: Data Mining
Data mining is used to find relationships between variables that one might not have considered previously. For example, you run a data search to compare the incidence of nosocomial infections rates on a particular unit against those that had surgery a minimum of one day prior. This might show a correlation between infection rates of a particular group (say, appendectomies) with a specific OR (or surgeon, or team, etc.). Perhaps the nosocomial infection rates of appendectomies was 24% when they used operating room 3. The data tells you to examine that OR, look for reasons why the incidence of infections was higher in that room. Data mining looks retrospectively at the correlation between two variables that might not have been identified otherwise.
o If you were able to perform a data mining search in your current setting, what topic or issue would you select? Keep in mind that data mining can ONLY happen if the topics or variables are electronically stored so when you identify your data mining topic, you need to state how the data is stored and accessed.
o Would you narrow it to a specific population and cross reference another variable such as a nursing intervention or would you widen the search to look for hidden trends?
o What other issues would need to be considered when looking at data mining trends for future practice?
Format your homework according to the following formatting requirements:
(1) The answer should be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides.
(2) The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the homework, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
(3) Also include a reference page. The Citations and references should follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.