Laura-Maria Peltonen

Postoperative pain documentation in a hospital setting: A topical review

Abstract Background and aims Nursing documentation supports continuity of care and provides important means of communication among clinicians. The aim of this topical review was to evaluate the published empirical studies on postoperative pain documentation in a hospital setting. Methods The review was conducted through a systematic search of electronic databases: Web of Science, PubMed/Medline, CINAHL, Embase, Ovid/Medline, Scopus and Cochrane Library. Ten studies were included. Study designs, documented postoperative pain information, quality of pain documentation, reported quality of postoperative pain management and documentation, and suggestions for future research and practice improvements were extracted from the studies. Results The most commonly used study design was a descriptive retrospective patient record review. The most commonly reported types of information were pain assessment, use of pain assessment tools, useof pain management interventions, reassessment, types of analgesics used, demographic information and pain intensity. All ten studies reported that the quality of postoperative pain documentation does not meet acceptable standards and that there is a need for improvement. The studies found that organization of regular pain management education for nurses is important for the future. Conclusions Postoperative pain documentation needs to beimproved. Regular educational programmes and development of monitoring systems for systematic evaluation of pain documentation are needed. Guidelines and recommendations should be based on the latest research evidence, and systematically implemented into practice. Implications Comprehensive auditing tools for evaluation of pain documentation can make quality assessment easier and coherent. Specific and clear documentation guidelines are needed and existing guidelines should be better implemented into practice. There is a need to increase nurses’ knowledge of postoperative pain management, assessment and documentation. Studies evaluating effectiveness of high quality pain documentation are required.

Nursing Informatics Research Priorities for the Future: Recommendations from an International Survey.

We present one part of the results of an international survey exploring current and future nursing informatics (NI) research trends. The study was conducted by the International Medical Informatics Association Nursing Informatics Special Interest Group (IMIA-NISIG) Student Working Group. Based on findings from this cross-sectional study, we identified future NI research priorities. We used snowball sampling technique to reach respondents from academia and practice. Data were collected between August and September 2015. Altogether, 373 responses from 44 countries were analyzed. The identified top ten NI trends were big data science, standardized terminologies (clinical evaluation/implementation), education and competencies, clinical decision support, mobile health, usability, patient safety, data exchange and interoperability, patient engagement, and clinical quality measures. Acknowledging these research priorities can enhance successful future development of NI to better support clinicians and promote health internationally.

Current Trends in Nursing Informatics: Results of an International Survey.

Nursing informatics (NI) can help provide effective and safe healthcare. This study aimed to describe current research trends in NI. In the summer 2015, the IMIA-NI Students Working Group created and distributed an online international survey of the current NI trends. A total of 402 responses were submitted from 44 countries. We identified a top five NI research areas: standardized terminologies, mobile health, clinical decision support, patient safety and big data research. NI research funding was considered to be difficult to acquire by the respondents. Overall, current NI research on education, clinical practice, administration and theory is still scarce, with theory being the least common. Further research is needed to explain the impact of these trends and the needs from clinical practice.

Detecting mentions of pain and acute confusion in Finnish clinical text

We study and compare two different approaches to the task of automatic assignment of predefined classes to clinical freetext narratives. In the first approach this is treated as a traditional mention-level named-entity recognition task, while the second approach treats it as a sentencelevel multi-label classification task. Performance comparison across these two approaches is conducted in the form of sentence-level evaluation and state-of-theart methods for both approaches are evaluated. The experiments are done on two data sets consisting of Finnish clinical text, manually annotated with respect to the topics pain and acute confusion. Our results suggest that the mentionlevel named-entity recognition approach outperforms sentence-level classification overall, but the latter approach still manages to achieve the best prediction scores on several annotation classes.

Development of an instrument for the evaluation of advanced life support performance

Assessing advanced life support (ALS) competence requires validated instruments. Existing instruments include aspects of technical skills (TS), non‐technical skills (NTS) or both, but one instrument for detailed assessment that suits all resuscitation situations is lacking. This study aimed to develop an instrument for the evaluation of the overall ALS performance of the whole team.

Information Management in the Daily Care Coordination in the Intensive Care Unit

This study aimed to explore intensive care shift leaders’ daily care coordination related information needs and sources of important information. Information needs were explored with a survey and sources of important information were determined through interviews. The survey response rate was 21 % (n = 20) and nine shift leaders were interviewed. The findings are that charge nurses and physicians in charge have different responsibilities and differing information needs, though, some managerial activities and information needs are shared. Shift leaders use numerous sources to obtain necessary information to support decision-making. Sources were categorized into electronic sources, human sources, manual sources and real-time events. Further, information was located within or outside the ICU or based on the shift leader’s knowledge. Information systems should be developed based on shift leaders’ information needs regardless of the source to support daily care coordination related decision-making. Shift leaders could further benefit from a real-time hospital-wide shared situational awareness.

Central Trends in Nursing Informatics: Students' Reflections from International Congress on Nursing Informatics 2014 (Taipei, Taiwan)

In July 2014, Taipei, Taiwan, hosted the biennial International Congress on Nursing Informatics (NI2014), titled East Meets West: eSMART+. This inaugural event for the Asia Pacific geographic region was organized by Taiwan’s Nursing Informatics Association and International Medical Informatics AssociationNursing Informatics Special Interest Group (IMIA-NISIG). The Congress attracted more than 500 participants from 28 countries, including about 80 students. There were more than 300 presentations, panel presentations, student papers, and poster sessions. At a specially organized student event, members of the Nursing Informatics Students’ Working Group had the opportunity tomeet and seek consensus about trends seen in the presentations. This meeting was followed by a collaborative writing effort, inspired by a similar publication by students in health geography.1Our goal in this article is to highlight the central themes presented at the Congress from the perspective of student participants and to provide a historical reference of the current topics, methodologies, and vision that inform and advance current nursing informatics research. We explore the five topics of interest that we found at NI2014: (1) standardized terminologies, (2) big data, (3) patient activation, (4) nursing informatics education and competencies, and (5) mobile health. To recognize some recent methodological trends in nursing informatics, we also present a methodological highlight regarding triangulation in health information technology.