The purpose of the proposed factorial study is to determine if use of decision support guidelines derived from a computerized expert system in nursing offers advantages in time savings and quality of care planning when compared to traditional resources available for nurses' patient care planning. RN volunteers (N=100) who vary on attributes of (1) type of education and (2) nursing experience will serve as their own controls in planning patient care based on specific case situations under three different conditions: (1) traditional - use of limited resources including a nursing textbook, nursing handbook and Physicians Desk Reference for drugs, (2) Use of decision support guidelines and optional resource library, and (3) Use of decision support guidelines which cite specific key resources for information from the optional resource library. The presentation of the case studies and conditions will be counterbalanced to control for effects of the testing situation in this repeated measures design. Three expert nurses will do ratings of the 100 care plans written for the case studies, each in her area of content expertise. They will not know the names of the subjects nor the testing condition under which a care plan was written. Evaluators will use established specific criteria and weighted percentage points to allocate a score of 0-100 for each care plan. (10% of responses will be duplicated and checked for consistency of ratings.) Data analysis will involve use of repeated measures ANOVA (p. = less than .05) to test for significant main effects of the treatment conditions and any interactive effects of the nurses' attributes on performance measures of time on task and quality of care planning.
| Norris, J; Cuddigan, J; Foyt, M et al. (1990) Decision support and outcomes of nurses' care planning. Comput Nurs 8:192-7 |
