How Nurses Use Data

Health Promotion and Disease Prevention: Using Data

Prior to entering the FNP program my sixteen years of nursing experience all took place in hospital settings, including work in the ICU, ER, cath lab, and same day surgery unit. I had never worked in public health or in a primary care setting and had minimal experience using health data to improve quality and patient safety. My first encounter with the use of data was in same day surgery, using SCIP core measures: we made sure our target population received their beta blocker the day of surgery, appropriate antibiotic selection, and VTE prophylaxis because this combined treatment had been shown to significantly improve outcomes and reduce recovery time.

After entering the FNP program I entered primary care where health promotion and disease prevention is at the forefront of my practice. This has renewed my love of nursing as I act as a teacher to my patients. I love watching patients get better and learn to care for themselves. In a hospital setting, nurses only see patients a few times at best but now I have a relationship with my patients and can see how my efforts have made a difference in people's lives. Using data has helped me appreciate the degree to which preventative care is effective and has also highlighted how specific health practices can make a difference, such as relatively moderate exercise and weight reduction, which can significantly reduce a patient's risk of diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic conditions. When dispensing preventative care it is particularly essential to have good data analysis skills: there is so much evidence available, some of it seemingly contradictory, the nurse must be able to determine which studies and which research articles are of particular relevance to the patient's specific condition.

The part of the FNP program I liked best was the volunteering component. I loved working at the school's affiliated homeless shelter. Many of the people in the shelter had no access to care for many years and it was amazing to see them flourish under the attention and compassion we were able to give them as volunteers. It demonstrated that the knowledge I was gaining could have a real, material effect in the world and particularly highlighted to me how even relatively small changes (some of the individuals in the shelter had not had access to care for many years) can be transformative.