Nursing Decision Support 'Needs' for Better Patient Management

Meeting relevant information needs for decision-making at the right point of care to the right user has been a continual challenge for Clinical Decision Support Systems development. This challenge is further intensified by 'potential complications' in patient status that create further decision support scopes. In the Australian health care domain, existing technologies that attempt to orchestrate clinical workflows to facilitate evidence-based practices still lack adequate mechanisms to manage these newly created decision support scopes at both 'information' and 'knowledge' levels. Identifying 'predictability' aspects of both nursing workflow and information needs highlight the anticipated nursing workflow and a set of 'decision-making factors'. Understanding how decision-making factors and nursing workflow are affected by a change in the illness trajectory direction elucidate focus for further development in existing technologies. Patient outcome could be further improved by providing necessary mechanisms in these technologies.