SON: Connections - Winter 2003

Headlines | Briefly | From the Deans Desk

Using Technology to Get to the Basics

Doctoral candidate Catherine D’Ambrosio is using Web-based technology to develop best practice nursing care suggestions that could ultimately benefit both nurses and patients.

"Adults who are hospitalized today are more acutely ill and in need of more intensive levels of nursing care than in the past," explains the 19-year veteran of medical-surgical nursing. The problem is that health-care reimbursement systems provide for a model of care that focuses on the disease, rather than the specific nursing care needs of the patient. "The hallmark of nursing care is the individual nurse’s therapeutic effectiveness with the individual patient," says D’Ambrosio. So how does the bedside RN, the nursing assistant, or the patient’s family member know what nursing care interventions are most appropriate for that patient at any particular time?

A computerized decision-support system currently being developed by D’Ambrosio will answer that question. Although the evidence-based practice suggestions are being written for bedside nurses and nursing assistants, D’Ambrosio hopes to also make the information available to family caregivers over the Web.

Users of such a program will first answer a series of questions about the patient. They will then access a research-based list of recommendations for nursing care. "Most people already have access to medical information, either through their primary care provider or over the Web," D’Ambrosio explains. "Access to nursing knowledge, however, is not currently as accessible."

D’Ambrosio’s current research focus is with patients suffering from cognitive impairment-related urinary incontinence. Further research will determine whether the methods she is developing will improve knowledge about basic nursing needs for all patients, and whether this knowledge can delay the onset of debilitating conditions. She also intends to research whether improved nursing care might delay institutionalization.

"Nurses don’t simply follow allopathic disease models to determine the nursing care needs of an individual patient. In order to write a useful nursing decision support system, and in order to use that information to provide good nursing care, you have to know what nurses do and how they solve problems." Her program is not a replacement for nurses, D’Ambrosio explains, but rather a supplement to provide individualized care in a time of critical nursing shortages.

Partial support for this program of research is being provided by the Hester McLaws Nursing Scholarship Fund.

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