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The aim of the study was to identify key elements of successful care process of patients with heart symptoms from the nursing management viewpoint in an emergency care. Through these descriptions, we aimed at identifying possibilities for using enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to support decision making in emergency care. Hospitals are increasingly moving to process-based workings and at the same time new information system in healthcare are developed and therefore it is essential to understand the strengths and weaknesses of current processes better. A qualitative descriptive design using critical incident technique was employed. Critical Incidents were collected with an open-ended questionnaire. The sample (n=50), 13 head nurses and 37 registered nurses, was purposeful selected from three acute hospitals in southern Finland. The process of patients with heart symptoms in emergency care was described. We identified three competence categories where special focus should be placed to achieve successful process of patients with heart symptoms: process-oriented competencies, personal/management competencies and logistics oriented competencies. Improvement of decision making requires that the care processes are defined and modeled. The research showed that there are several happenings in emergency care where an ERP system could help and support decision making. These happenings can be categorized in two groups: 1) administrative related happenings and 2) patient processes related happenings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comprehensive wound documentation is an important tool in evaluating and planning patient care. The sublanguage used in ICUs may affect negatively to the wound care and thus to the healing process. We made a quantitative content analysis of nursing documentation of cardiac surgery adult patients (n=60) who had stayed over four days in the ICU. The sublanguage used in nursing documentation of wounds and ulcers in the ICU was unstructured with many words of colloquial language, misspellings and abbreviations. The documentation did not cover all aspects of proper wound care. The information technology could be helpful for nurses to document right things with plain language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patient information systems have been available and implemented in many intensive care units for several years and still nursing research has little evidence from the use of the recorded data. One of the focus areas in Finnish nursing research is the use of information technology in evidence based nursing. The nursing intensity and patient classification assessments are important part of intensive care units data in Finnish patient information systems. Our main goal was to conduct a pilot study concerning nursing intensity and patient classification together with patient records to find out if this will provide more information on the nursing intensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]