NURS-6051-12: Transforming Nursing & Healthcare Through Information Technology Essay

Teenage pregnancy continues to be a socially and health-wise significant issue on society owing to its long term impact on individuals’ life (Cherry & Dillon, 2014). Teenage pregnancy is responsible for majority of early school dropouts, early marriages, and abortions related to unwanted pregnancies. Contrary to popular belief, health is not only measured by absence of illness and infirmity, but also leading healthy lifestyles in all aspects of life. Teenage pregnancy affects long term health by limiting a person’s career opportunities on account of early school dropouts, and thereby limiting their purchasing power and ability to access and afford healthcare services. While further research is needed to establish the extent to which teenage pregnancy impacts an individual’s latter life in terms of access to healthcare services, there is ample evidence to suggest that teenage pregnancy has a negative long term impact on a person’s life.NURS-6051-12: Transforming Nursing & Healthcare Through Information Technology Essay

Clinical Question

According to 2015 survey findings, teenage pregnancy is still a big problem in the American society, with birth rates of 22.3 per thousand in this age group (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017). This research seeks to answer the question on how teenage pregnancy impact long term life outcomes with respect to social mobility, family life, and standard of living. It will discuss how I will explore the issue of teenage pregnancy using the data, information, knowledge, wisdom continuum (DIKW)

My understanding of topic is limited to the knowledge that teenage pregnancy refers to pregnancy n females aged below 20 years, and is common among younger, unmarried women. In light of previous learning, I also understand that teenage pregnancy is responsible for early school dropouts, and consequently, limited access to economically meaningful career opportunities. Areas that need further exploration include the connection between social class and teenage pregnancy, the long term impact of teenage pregnancy on children born and brought up by teenage mothers, and the complex relationships between sex education in schools, conservative ideologies on contraceptive use, teenage sex, teenage pregnancy, and teenagers’ vulnerability to sexually transmitted diseases.NURS-6051-12: Transforming Nursing & Healthcare Through Information Technology Essay

The Raw Data Stage

Data refers to the fragments of knowledge that an individual has on a given subject (Topaz, 2013). In my case, the data sets that I have regarding the issue of teenage pregnancy is that it refers to pregnancies in women aged below 20, and that it negatively impacts school completion rates, and consequently, long term financial success. However, my knowledge is limited the conceptual understanding what teenage pregnancy is and how it affects individuals’ education, and future careers. However, I lack deeper insight on the interconnections that exist among the various variables listed above.

Given this data set, I need to transform it into knowledge by understanding the cause-effect relationship between teenage pregnancy and long term life outcomes, health of the individual, social status of teenage girls who get pregnant, conservative ideologies, and sex education.  In my online search, I will use the key words:NURS-6051-12: Transforming Nursing & Healthcare Through Information Technology Essay

“Teenage pregnancy in the U.S.”

“Teenage pregnancy in the world”

“Social class and teenage pregnancy,”

“Teenage pregnancy and school completion”

“Teenage pregnancy and long term life outcomes”

“Sex education and teenage pregnancy”

“Social/religious ideologies on contraceptive use and teenage pregnancy”

Data to Information

The data I will get from the above searches will be disjointed and meaningless unless I decode it to understand what it means with respect to teenage pregnancy. For instance, my searches will produce data indicating that teenage pregnancy rates in the U.S. in 2015 was 22.3 per one thousand, down from 30 in 2014 (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017). At the same time, the number of babies born by teenage mothers in 2015 was 229, 715. Viewed separately, these sets of data are not useful unless they are grouped together to see patterns not only among themselves, but also within the larger population. For instance, I would be able to determine that the prevalence of teenage pregnancy in the U.S. is going down by comparing the 2014 and 2015 rates. To make a more valid and reliable conclusion, I will go back five years to see what the rates were, and see how they have fluctuated over time. At the same time, these rates are too broad; they do not specify pregnancy prevalence rates among different ethnic groups and girls from different social classes, which will form the basis for further research on whether teenage pregnancy is related with ethnic and social background of the individual.NURS-6051-12: Transforming Nursing & Healthcare Through Information Technology Essay

In this regard, moving from data to information in the DIKW continuum involves interpreting the data to make connections between and among various variables and cause-effect factors. The information constitutes meaningful sets of data that can be used for further analysis to generate new ideas, in other words, to move from information to knowledge.

Information to Knowledge

Information is the stage at which information is synthesized into formal interconnections, and recognition of patterns and abnormalities in the relationships (Henley, 2015). In the field of nursing and healthcare, the knowledge level is referred to as the decision-support system, because it forms the basis for making decisions about the issue in question (McGonigle&Matrian, 2009). For instance, the knowledge gained from the information acquired, such as the recognition that the prevalence of teenage pregnancy has been going down in the past 5 years suggests that there are measures and intervention programs, such as sex education, society’s embracing of contraception use, and sensitization campaigns. The knowledge gained from this analysis of the teenage pregnancy patterns is that the intervention measures employed are effective in reversing the prevalence of teenage pregnancy, and can therefore inform evidence-based practices in nursing (American Nursing Association, 2008). In this regard, knowledge constitutes knowledge that be used to solve problems in different settings. For instance, the knowledge gained from this study can be extended to other similar settings to address the problem of teenage pregnancy. It can be said, therefore, that knowledge is the transformation of information of potential solutions to address a given problem. It is the point at which the researcher recognizes that a problem can be solved by using the information gained from the research.NURS-6051-12: Transforming Nursing & Healthcare Through Information Technology Essay

Knowledge to Wisdom

Wisdom is the last stage of the DIKW continuum, and it involves the application of knowledge to address a clinical situation. In this regard, wisdom is the process of turning knowledge into a solution for solving real life problems. It is the point of taking action to reverse or control a situation. With respect to the case of teenage pregnancy, wisdom will involve taking action measures to reduce prevalence of teenage pregnancies in a different setting by applying the knowledge gained from research. Unless it is applied to solve a problem knowledge is useless, because application of knowledge is the ultimate end goal of any research. At the same time, wisdom involves understanding how to apply the knowledge in a professional and ethically acceptable way by observing professional code of conduct. For instance, carrying out sex education on teenage pregnancy should ensure that minors are not exposed to inappropriate sexual content.NURS-6051-12: Transforming Nursing & Healthcare Through Information Technology Essay

References

American Nurses Association. (2008). Nursing informatics: Scope and standards of practice.

Silver Spring, MD: nursesbooks.org.

Center for Disease Control and Prevention.(2017). Teen pregnancy in the United States.

Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/teenpregnancy/about/index.htm

Cherry, A., & Dillon, M. (2014).International Handbook of Adolescent Pregnancy: Medical,

Psychosocial, and Public Health Responses. New York: Springer Science & Business Media.

Henley, H. (2015). Routledge International Handbook of Advanced Quantitative Methods in

Nursing Research. New York: Routledge.

McGonigle, D., &Mastrian, K. (2009).Nursing Informatics and the Foundation of Knowledge.

New York: Jones & Bartlett Publishers.

Topaz, M. (2013). Invited Editorial: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to nursing informatics theory: using

the Data-Knowledge-Information-Wisdom framework to guide informatics research. Online Journal of Nursing Informatics (OJNI), 17 (3). Available at  http://ojni.org/issues/?p=2852

The use of technology in healthcare is often difficult. The
information systems deployed by any organization must meet the health needs
of the patients or consumers, the business needs of the organization in the
financial terms of the industry, as well as be effective in a purely
technological fashion. At the critical care center of the New York-Weill. NURS-6051-12: Transforming Nursing & Healthcare Through Information Technology Essay
Cornell Campus, there is currently an attempt to implement a entirely
paperless system within the hospital environment. This means that all
patient information, lab results and medical texts would be accessible only
on computers. Also, physicians would record and order medications via
computer and write computer-based progress notes. This is designed to
minimize errors regarding incomplete and faulty information, and would
allow systems to notify medical personnel electronically in the case of
contraindicated medications, for example. Additionally, a fully featured
sign-out program would allow the House Staff to print sign-out sheets
containing brief histories, medications, and to-do lists for each of their
patients, enhancing communication between primary and the covering
physicians on call for that evening, even if the physicians were not the
patient’s regular doctors. (Official Website, 2003)
At present, in the midst of this critical transition, the critical
care facility employs Eclipses software for charting on patient and the
medication given. Although the software company deployed is better known in
the media for its games technology, the visual nature that this allows for
creating charts is useful, especially when the individuals who must read
the charts need to do so quickly and/or do not speak English as their
primary or first language. (Eclipses, 2001)
The critical care facility also uses a Pyxis machine to database all
the narcotic information regarding patients. NURS-6051-12: Transforming Nursing & Healthcare Through Information Technology Essay

Himmelstein & Woolhandler (1990) are among the earliest sociologists and researchers to investigate the effects of health policy on healthcare organizations and systems. The authors note that health care has undergone many changes during the last few decades, and rather than provide humanitarian services, most healthcare policies and regulations now favor scientific and economic services or results rather than good medical care. Theoretically, the authors suggest humanitarian concerns should be bold and prevalent in any healthcare organizations policies. Such policies should provide guidance for the care of patients, and the manner in which organization is communicated to patients and between healthcare professionals, an idea that is supported by other researchers including Hancock (1999) and Lee, Buse &Fustukian; (2002). The policies and procedures should include guidance about the hierarchy in the healthcare organization so subordinates know who to turn to in the event of problems.
Himmelstein & Woolhandler (1990) take a Marxist view of healthcare policy creation, suggesting health care as a system has become capitalistic in nature, which is not congruent with current humanitarian preferences among members of the medical community (p.14). They suggest “small scare owners like doctors” initially came to “workshops (hospitals)” to provide health care for individuals in their community. However thanks to the emergence of technology, which increased the “power” of healthcare systems, today the “increasing of accumulation of capital” is of more concern than the doctors and patients they treat (p.14). This is because many policies in the health care system focus on economic factors, like conservation of supplies, or reduction of staff to keep overhead costs low, especially as healthcare insurance costs rise and fewer people have the means with which to pay for health care services (Himmelstein & Woolhandler 14). Medicine and its polici… NURS-6051-12: Transforming Nursing & Healthcare Through Information Technology Essay