A Home Care Practice Scenario Using Clinical Dashboards

Portable electronic medical records used by home care nurses do not provide well-organized displays of previous documentation regarding patient care. The retrieved information is in a disorderly format; therefore, clinicians have to manually organize necessary information from multiple screens. This article describes the development of clinical dashboards to present key information necessary for individual patient care; a scenario using the clinical dashboards; and home care nurses' perceptions of the clinical dashboards. Four health problems (congestive heart failure, anticoagulation, ulcer wounds, and diabetes) and health problem-specific key data were selected based on home care practice and presented in the respective clinical dashboards. A questionnaire developed by the researchers consisted of 28 closed-ended and 2 open-ended questions to assess home care nurses' perceptions of the clinical dashboards in the scenario. Fourteen of 19 nurses recruited from three home care organizations positively perceived the clinical dashboards presented in the scenario and provided suggestions for improvement. A few features of the dashboards were perceived neutrally or negatively, which indicated the need for further development of the clinical dashboards to fit the needs of home care nurses.