Could we prove the nursing outcomes utilising clinical data warehouse? Effectiveness of pressure ulcer intervention in Korean tertiary hospital

Abstract

The use of Clinical Data Warehouse (CDW) for research and quality improvement has become more frequent in the last 10 years. In this study, we used CDW to determine the effectiveness of pressure ulcer interventions offered by ward nurses and wound care nursing specialists. A retrospective clinical outcomes study that utilise CDW has been carried out. We identified 1415 patients who were evaluated as pressure ulcer risk group from 1 July 2019 to 31 December 2019. Kaplan-Meier survival analyses were used to estimate the time to occurrence of pressure ulcers. We compared the survival curves of each group by applying the log-rank test for significance. The overall median time to occurrence for both groups was 13 days (95% CI range: 11-14 days). The control group showed a longer median time (14 days) to occurrence than the case group (12 days). In the pressure ulcer stage I, the case group showed a longer median time (14 days) to occurrence than the control group (8 days), indicating that the intervention provided by the wound care nursing specialist was effective in stage I, and delayed the occurrence of pressure ulcers. The findings may be used as preliminary data for the utilisation of the CDW in the field of nursing research in the future. Also, facilitating the accessibility of the wound care nursing specialist in the general wards should be effective to decrease the incidence rates.

Keywords: clinical data warehouse; electronic health records; pressure ulcer; prevention.