HLT 362 Discuss why it is important for a person working in health care to understand statistical concepts
Sample Answer for HLT 362 Discuss why it is important for a person working in health care to understand statistical concepts Included After Question
Topic 1 DQ 2
Health statistics comprises of data that give an information of a descriptive summary about health. This statistical data together with statistical concepts are important in the following ways elaborated below to person working in healthcare.
Health care providers use statistical data to monitor trends as well as the conditions in a local area and make a comparison with other geographical area as well as nationwide or globally; this helps to easily monitor the possible risks causing a certain condition or affecting people of a certain age using the data collected.
Statistical data analyzed in the healthcare facility enable in fair public and private fund allocation together with determining how and where research efforts should be centralized at most at an individual level or across.
Statistical questionnaire by a person in a healthcare setting help patients be satisfied with their care and this trigger them having the urge of follow-up as well supervision and this as well help practitioners or caregivers to have a better understanding of the patient information therefore effective treatment.
Statistics is important at an individual level in healthcare for it aids in making important critical decisions and opinions basing data as the determinant and this can be of help when critically assessing the quality of analyses presented by others. Statistics enable one to analyze and figure out claims basing them on quantitative evidence, and this enable one to find a difference between dubious and reasonable facts which is an important aspect in data interpretation that is presented by people from motived which are unknown.
Statistical help is required for individual decision making for we live in a world of information and for one to be well informed, accurate and correct statistical concepts are required at an individual level.
Some Examples in real life are:
Practitioners predict diseases basing results on statistical concepts. Where one example is a survey showing approximately 80% of patients have cancer from a local geographical area, statistical skills and data analysis when involved may determine the effects of cancer in the body and a conclusion may be drawn that smoking is the major reason as to why cancer cases are popular in a certain region.
Practitioners also use statistics such as in the current pandemic of COVID-19 disease and have been giving a conclusion after analyzing statistical data that the most affected persons to a point of death are individuals having chronic diseases and the aged peoples. This has enabled in creating awareness and informing of the precautionary measures to be taken thoroughly most by the ones having chronic diseases.
References:
Barbara A. Bartkowiak, George E. Magnin Medical Library, Marshfield Clinic, Marshfield, Wisconsin.
Marsh, J. (2020, April 4). 10 awesome reasons why statistics are important. Medium. https://medium.com/@john_marsh7/10-awesome-reasons-why-statistics-are-important-96b87e283640
STATISTICS IMPROVES HEALTH CARE. (n.d.). American Statistical Association (ASA). https://www.amstat.org/asa/files/pdfs/StatSig/StatSigHealthCare.pdf
A Sample Answer 2 For the Assignment: HLT 362 Discuss why it is important for a person working in health care to understand statistical concepts
Title: HLT 362 Discuss why it is important for a person working in health care to understand statistical concepts
It is essential for a person working in healthcare to understand statistical concepts. Statistical analysis helps healthcare providers find correlations between entities. Statistical data helps providers, such as nurses, understand trends in patient care, improve outcomes and develop evidence-based practice (EBP). (Helbig & Ambrose, 2018) EBP is important to nurses all over the world to create guidelines and implementation to improve their skills and knowledge using research-based strategies. Alqahtani et al., 2019)
I work in an adult Acute Rehabilitation unit. We frequently have patients with severe Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI) who have extended hospital stays. Some of our TBI patients stay on our unit for 5-6 weeks so their hospital stays from admission into the ER to discharge can be over two months. These patients have a higher risk of acquiring venous thromboembolisms (VNEs). Statical data can be used in the unit to track and monitor occurrences of TBI patients who acquire VNE or PEs related to immobilization, length of stay, and types of anticoagulants used. (Zhang et al., 2020)
For some reason, my department does not utilize this type of data on a staff nurse level which is unfortunate but I do plan on being able to create a study on the unit I work at after I take this class and learn more about EBP development. I would assume that I need permission to access files or work with the manager to determine how to obtain and analyze data from our patients. I would be able to use this type of information to determine correlations which can then be used to decrease the occurrence of VNEs/PEs with TBI patients.
Refeences:
Alqahtani, N., Oh, K. M., Kitsantas, P., & Rodan, M. (2019). Nurses’ evidence‐based practice knowledge, attitudes and implementation: A cross‐sectional study. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 29(1-2), 274–283. https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.15097
Helbig, J., & Ambrose, J. (2018). Applied Statistics for Health Care. Gcumedia.com. https://lc.gcumedia.com/hlt362v/applied-statistics-for-health-care/v1.1/#/chapter/1
Zhang, M., Parikh, B., Dirlikov, B., Cage, T., Lee, M., & Singh, H. (2020). Elevated risk of venous thromboembolism among post-traumatic brain injury patients requiring pharmaceutical immobilization. Journal of Clinical Neuroscience, 75, 66–70. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jocn.2020.03.028