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Thanks for your post Hailey and highlighting how nursing informatics is incorporated within your practice in the operating room.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I enjoyed reading your post about how informatics allows and ensures for patient safety and I could not agree more. My top three during admission database is going over the patients medication list, if the patient has fallen within the past six months, and if the patient has been readmitted within the past thirty days or ninety days. It is extremely important to ask patients what medications they are currently taken, what medications have been discontinued, and what medications are new. I make sure that their medication list is updated so that physicians are able to see what medications patients are currently taking, what may need to be re-ordered, or if any medications or dosages may need to be readjusted while they are in the hospital. My second question is about falls because too many times I have patients whom are extremely independent and stubborn (my cute elderly patients in the 80s and 90s) about getting up alone and may think that they do not need any help. <\/span><\/p>\n

It is our duty to ask when the last time patients have fallen and even if patients have never fallen, we still have to use our best judgments to consider if they are high risk for falls. If patients are considered to be high risk for falls, they get a high risk falls band, bed alarm on, and a sign outside their room letting everyone know. Sometimes older patients may be forgetful and confused when they wake up and I like to be safe and prevent a fall when possible. In every room, when patients are lying flat in their beds, there is a huge sign attached to the ceiling that says \u201cCALL, DON\u2019T FALL.\u201d We take falls very serious on our unit and charting and collecting these data is very useful. Asking patients if they have been readmitted within the past 30 days or 90 days is also very important. Informatics help in this department seeing that we are able to look back at the chart to see if it\u2019s the same diagnosis, what kind of treatments were done, and when patients were discharged. This type of informatics also prevents any kind of treatments that may be needed to be repeated and it prevents errors as well. To prevent errors from occurring, there is a need for a set of performance indicators and metrics related to patient safety for classifying and measuring mistakes (Karami and Hafizi, 2017).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n