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Are you asking the right admission questions when assessing dyspnea?
Sandra MacDonald1, Jan Yates, Robyn Lance
1Nursing and Patient Care Services, National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.
Background:
Dyspnea is an important admission parameter to detect undiagnosed cardiopulmonary conditions. The typical admission question, "Are you short of breath?" can give insufficient or misleading data.
Objectives:
A group of clinical research nurses sought to improve dyspnea assessments by using a more accurate measure that would not unduly lengthen the admission process itself. The methodology used to achieve this outcome was research utilization.
Methods:
On admission, 103 patients were given the standard question "Are you short of breath?" followed by 4 Visual Analog Scales of Dyspnea (VASD). These response measures assess the degree of dyspnea in relationship to variable exertion activities on a scale of 0 to 10. All responses to VASD were analyzed using descriptive statistics.
Results:
The results showed that 30% of patients who responded "No" to the shortness of breath query scored 5 or more for dyspnea on the VASD. All scores of 5 or more were reported to the primary care provider for further workup.
Conclusion:
The results from this project gave impetus to designing a more formal research study that could validate VASD use in clinical admission assessments.
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