Here’s a look back at some of the most popular posts from 2017:
How Nursing Assessments Supplement Clinical Intuition
How do mothers know when their child will be sick before they show any classic symptoms? It’s all based on a “mother’s intuition” which comes from mothers being able to pick up the most subtle changes in their child’s behavior. Maybe they aren’t eating normally or something just seems a little off, but this maternal instinct is rarely wrong.
Nurses carry this same intuition regarding the health of their patients. Spending hours of a clinical shift at the patient’s bedside enables the nurse to pick up on subtle observations that can go unnoticed by other practitioners who spend significantly less amount of time at the bedside. Nurses are educated to document their clinical findings through head-to-toe nursing assessments which include information about a patient’s physiological, physical, psychological and sociological status. These assessments are performed upon admission or transfer, and once each shift, at minimum, during a patient’s hospital stay, and then documented in the patient’s medical record. Read more
Shifting from Reactive to Proactive Rapid Response Teams
Assisting patients and other consumers of care to achieve optimal health is a complex task faced by healthcare professionals. Yet, in order to so do, care teams are frequently equipped with outdated tools, siloed information, and cumbersome electronic medical records. Because of these limitations, clinicians often can’t see a complete view of their patient’s condition, but rather fragmented information that isn’t integrated to paint a full picture. This leaves clinicians reacting to what has, or is, happening rather than proactively treating what would happen. Read more
How a Clinical Surveillance Tool is Enhancing Patient Care
Wouldn’t it be nice if care providers had a crystal ball?
They would know in advance to keep their patients in the ICU a little longer or not send them home quite yet. Mission Health has implemented a clinical surveillance tool that constantly monitors a patient’s information and provides a full visual representation of the patient’s condition that provides them their version of a crystal ball. By observing patient trends (either declining or improving), clinicians can be alerted to at-risk patients earlier, and vice versa, can know when a patient is ready for transfer or discharge. Read more