Blood pressure documentation in the emergency department

Area of Science:

• Emergency Medicine
• Nursing Practice
• Clinical Documentation

Background:

• Accurate blood pressure monitoring is crucial in emergency settings.
• Understanding documentation patterns informs clinical workflow and patient care.
• Variations in blood pressure documentation frequency may impact patient management.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze the frequency of blood pressure documentation by nursing professionals in an emergency department.
• To investigate the relationship between blood pressure values and documentation frequency.

Main Methods:

• Cross-sectional, observational study of adult patient records in an emergency department observation ward (March-May 2014).
• Data collected on patient identification, triage, and blood pressure documentation.
• Pearson's correlation coefficient used for statistical analysis (α<0.05).

Main Results:

• Analyzed 157 records with 430 blood pressure measurements (avg. 3 per patient).
• 46.5% of blood pressure measurements were abnormal.
• No significant correlation found between systolic blood pressure values and time interval between documentation (r=0.173, p=0.031).

Conclusions:

• No correlation exists between blood pressure documentation frequency and actual blood pressure values.
• Documentation frequency increases with patient severity.
• Documentation frequency decreases with longer length of stay in the emergency department.