Clinical Decision Support and Perioperative Peripheral Nerve Injury: A Quality Improvement Project

Decision support at the point of care has been demonstrated to be an effective tool in providing a safe environment and improving patient outcomes. The operating room is typically an area where advanced technology is introduced to nurses on a regular basis. This quality improvement project focused on preventing a peripheral nerve injury, which is an example of a postoperative adverse event that is considered preventable. Injury of a peripheral nerve is the result of compression, hyperextension, flexion, or ischemia surrounding the nerve. The goals for this project were to improve the knowledge of peripheral nerve injury of the operating room nurses, design and implement a peripheral nerve injury assessment screen that could provide decision support within the operating room record, improve the nursing documentation of peripheral nerve injury interventions, and (long term) decrease the incidence of peripheral nerve injury. A decision support screen within the operating room record was designed to supplement the operating room nurse's risk assessment for peripheral nerve injury. The components of this project involved a preliminary and postproject surveys on peripheral nerve injury knowledge, an educational presentation, and a retrospective random review of nursing documentation in the operating room electronic health records. Project results demonstrated a significant increase in nursing documentation of peripheral nerve injury interventions (63%-92%) and a positive attitude toward their exposure to basic decision support (P = .046). Recommendations for future studies and establishing a standardized coding system for peripheral nerve injury identification were identified.