The collection of data in health care is one critical way of ensuring that patients receive high-quality health care services. Data ensures that the health professionals have all the necessary information that can be used to provide health care services. In this case, it would be prudent for the practitioners to ensure that they collect all the relevant information before making essential healthcare decisions (Mercieca-Bebber et al., 2018). For example, in the emergency department, the collection of patient information can be a challenge. This is because the health practitioner has limited time, often a few minutes before they are required to provide imminent health care services. In this case, the professionals might not have enough time to check on the patient’s medical or health history.

The most important data necessary in the emergency room are past medical history, medication, and allergies. While other information is necessary at the time, it would be prudent for health professionals to ensure that they capture the most critical information. According to McGonigle and Mastrian (2021), the data will be important in determining the medication provided during the time. In some cases, the health professionals could provide given medications thinking that they are saving the patient’s life; however, their allergies could lead to adverse reactions or fatalities. Therefore, health professionals would be required to e vigilant and collect critical data to ensure patients receive the required health care services. In such situations, data should be collected and stored in electronic health records systems. This system will ensure an easier retrieval of the patient’s information. On top of this, the data should be stored such that critical information such as age, allergies, and medical history is provided as a summary of the patient information, as noted by Patterson et al. (2019). this will ensure that the professionals providing health to the patient have all the necessary data during the process. The data will also be easier to retrieve since a few keystrokes would bring all the required information making the health care process effective and efficient.

In the emergency department, clinical reasoning and judgment are valuable skills for nurse leaders. In most instances, the nurses are required to make significant decisions within the shortest time possible without necessarily having time to weigh different options (Berndt & Fischer, 2018). In such cases, the health care professional can take a ‘glance’ at the summary of the patient information recorded in the health record. This will help the nurse reach practical reasoning and judgment that will meet the patient’s needs.

References

Berndt, M., & Fischer, M. R. (2018). The role of electronic health records in clinical reasoning. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1434(1), 109-114.McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. (2021). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.

Mercieca-Bebber, R., King, M. T., Calvert, M. J., Stockler, M. R., & Friedlander, M. (2018). The importance of patient-reported outcomes in clinical trials and strategies for future optimization. Patient-related outcome measures, 9, 353.

Patterson, B. W., Pulia, M. S., Ravi, S., Hoonakker, P. L., Hundt, A. S., Wiegmann, D., … & Carayon, P. (2019). Scope and influence of electronic health record–integrated clinical decision support in the emergency department: a systematic review. Annals of emergency medicine, 74(2), 285-296.