Research
Nurse ‘worry’ spot on predicting patient status
Research confirms that nurses’ intuition is an accurate predictor of a patient’s declining condition.
Using a five-point rating system, 150 nursing professionals at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota were asked to predict each of their patient’s potential for decline within the next 24 hours. A total of 31,159 patient shifts, and 3185 unique patients, were involved in the study.
Three separate groups then reviewed each report: a physician in the same specialty, an experienced nurse and either a physician, nurse or nurse practitioner.
Of the 492 cases in which the nurses rated a high level of worry – enough to call for medical attention – 77 per cent were backed up by the reviewers.
Nurses with more than one year of experience were significant-ly more accurate — 79 per cent, as opposed to 68 per cent for those with less than one year on the job.
The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA).
Applying a nurse’s trained eye to identify deteriorating patients can sometimes raise red flags even before objective markers can, the researchers said.
“Our study demonstrates that the ‘worry factor’ in its current form is accurate in detecting patient deterioration.
“Nurses generally have more constant and prolonged contact with patients during their hospitalisation as compared to physicians, putting them in a particularly advantaged position to recognise patterns that can be a telltale sign of impending physiological deterioration.”