Clinical Decision Support Systems: Decision Support Systems

Clinical Decision Support Systems:

Decision support systems were first developed and implemented in the corporate world in order to support business management. In the past few years, these support systems have been integrated into health care organizations to provide a sharpened evaluation capacity to data warehousing and data mining. The refined data analysis ability can result in enhanced patient care and diagnoses through assessment of several symptoms, forecasting of some drug interaction results, and other factors. As decision support systems are increasingly integrated into health care organizations and facilities, they have become important elements of health care systems. Actually, clinical decision support systems have been crucial in helping advanced practice nurses to make informed decisions and provide quality health care.

Definition of these Systems:

Clinical decision support systems can be described as interactive decision support systems computer software that are designed to help physicians and other practitioners in the health care system with decision making duties like the determination of diagnosis of patient information. These systems offer physicians, patients, staff, and other health care professionals with knowledge and individual-specific information that are competently sorted or provided at suitable times to improve the quality of health care ("Clinical Decision Support," n.d.). Generally, clinical decision support systems incorporate various tools that assist in improving decision making in the medical workflow. The ability of these tools to enhance decision making is attributed to their provision of computerized alerts and reminders to health care providers and patients. In addition, these tools contain clinical guidelines, various sets of condition-specific orders, documentation templates, relevant reference information, diagnostic support, and focused patient data reports and summaries.

Use of Clinical Decision Support Systems:

Health care professionals such as physicians and nurses use clinical decision support systems to prepare diagnosis and review the diagnosis in attempts to enhance the final outcome ("Clinical Decision Support System," n.d.). The use of clinical decision support systems may involve data mining, which may be carried out to evaluate the patient's medical history. Notably, the process of using data mining to accomplish this objective is conducted in conjunction with relevant medical research. The evaluation can assist in forecasting probable events that include drug interactions and disease symptoms.

In today's health care environment, there are two major kinds of clinical decision support systems that are used. One of these systems is a CDSS that utilizes a knowledge base, which applies rules to patient data through inference engine and exhibits the results to the end user. The second type of CDSS is one that does not have a knowledge base and relies on machine learning as a means of evaluating clinical data. It is important to note that most of the current clinical decision support systems function as components of comprehensive electronic health record systems while stand-alone applications are rarely used. Generally, the use of clinical decision support systems is anticipated to increase because of the enactment of the HITECH Act, which requires medical providers to show meaningful use of health IT.

Value of CDSS to Advanced Practice Nurses:

Similar to other health care professionals, advanced practice nurses use clinical decision support systems to make informed clinical decisions and provide quality health care. According to the findings of a research on the use of CDSS in advanced practiced nursing, advanced practice nurses perceived the value of these systems to its ability to predict decision outcomes before the actual decision making (Weber, 2007, p.666). A considerable portion of advanced practice nurses use the system to make decisions regarding medical treatment. These systems were mostly effective in situations where family members were the major party in the treatment decision process. The value of the clinical decision support systems is its provision of objective clinical prognosis information that enhances the process of decision making for family members and enhances the level of comfort. Furthermore, advanced practice nurses have reported that clinical decision support systems help in lessening anxiety during end-of-life decision making.

Advanced practice nurses also benefit from the use of clinical decision support systems because of the ability of these systems to intervene when a clinical error is about to be made (DeNisco & Barker, 2012, p.346). For instance, when an order for medication is put into the electronic medical record of a patient, the computerized system may show that the patient is allergic to that medication. In this situation, the computerized system will signal this fact through providing instant alert and cancelling the order. In addition to such instances, clinical errors can be avoided by advanced practice nurses through provision of alerts when a patient is at risk for falls. The quality of care by advanced practice nurses is also enhanced through easy electronic access to information as compared to the past when these health care practitioners relied on journals and textbooks to find clinical information.