title: Modeling the distribution of Nursing Effort using structured Labor and Delivery documentation.
abstract: Our study objectives included the development and evaluation of models for representing the distribution of shared unit-wide nursing care resources among individual Labor and Delivery patients using quantified measurements of nursing care, referred to as Nursing Effort. The models were intended to enable discrimination between the amounts of care delivered to patient subsets defined by attributes such as patient acuity. For each of five proposed models, scores were generated using an analysis set of 686,402 computerized nurse-documented events associated with 1093 patients at three hospitals during January and February 2006. Significant differences were detected in Nursing Effort scores according to patient acuity, care facility, and in scores generated during shift change versus non-shift change hours. The development of nursing care quantification strategies proposed in this study supports outcomes analysis by establishing a foundation for measuring the effect of patient-level nursing care on individual patient outcomes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Informatics, University of Utah, School of Medicine, 26 South 2000 East, Suite 5700 HSEB, Salt Lake City, UT 841112 5750, USA. eric.hall@hsc.utah.edu
authors.forename: Eric S
authors.initials: ES
authors.lastname: Hall
authors.forename: Mollie R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Poynton
authors.forename: Scott P
authors.initials: SP
authors.lastname: Narus
authors.forename: Sidney N
authors.initials: SN
authors.lastname: Thornton
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007743:Labor, Obstetric; D016294:Models, Nursing; D011247:Pregnancy; D012189:Retrospective Studies