Technology In Home Care: Data And Wisdom Model

Technology in Home Care:

Data and Wisdom Model

Melissa Nielsen Nursing 451 In pediatric home health care, medically fragile children are cared for in the comfort of their own home. This eases the burden on the hospital system and is often a relief to the family of the patient, who no longer need to travel back and forth from the hospital to see their loved one. Many home care patients are quite sick, requiring advanced technology to assist in maintaining their stability. The varying technology used in home care affects all four areas of the Data to Wisdom model.

The first area in the model, Data, refers to the procurement of raw data pertaining to the patient, such as heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen saturation. This raw data is collected by a number of different technologies for the acutely ill patient ("Overview of nursing informatics," 2012, p. 97). A mechanical ventilator is used to assist the patient in breathing. The settings on the ventilator show the nurse, among many other raw data, the patient’s rate of breathing and the amount of pressure of air being pushed into the lungs. The electronic pulse oximeter shows the nurse what the patient’s blood oxygen level is, along with the patient’s heart

The ventilator and pulse oximeter assist the nurse in this evaluation in that the nurse can look at the current settings after the interventions, along with the patient assessment and determine whether the patient has stabilized and the interventions were effective. This process results in increased wisdom and experience for the nurse, who will now be able to more effectively be able to integrate the information provided by the technology with experience to understand what is happening and what to do about