Nursing Interview Analysis

Introduction

Amber, Lauren, and I seated ourselves at a large table tucked in the back corner of the Maryville University Library. Ahead of us sat four others: Senior Nursing Students, ready to assist us as we exchange introductions and began the interview. The plan, to ask questions and examine information supplied to us by Nursing students in order to create an accurate plan on our App. The Goal:

Find the most effective means to simplify while speeding up their clinical process.

Who We Spoke With

The Nursing Students were as eager to present us with Information as we were to listen and in this process we unfortunately were unable to grab their names. At the mention of free time, however, the Nurses laughed. Each of them brought up their families, children, full time jobs, and other necessary parts of their lives that gave them little to no free time. Aside from that, many of them came into Maryville from previous expertises, three of which were medical practices.

Introducing the Map and Goal

Finalizing our introductions and happy chatter our group presented to the Nurses our Goal sheets which detailed our uninformed view of what the clinical process looks like to a Nursing student. Amber stood from her seat and began writing on the whiteboard behind us as they fed us information in rigorous detail about how the process actually happens and we scrambled to keep up with writing the information presented to us.

The Senior Nursing students shockingly told us that each clinical Worksheet takes roughly 10 hours to finish. Eighty percent of it is completed on the day of the clinical, the other twenty percent being completed upon day two with between one to three hours of sleep in between.

In addition, tacked alongside each clinical, and on the weekends without clinical’s they are assigned twenty-five to forty question tests that cover between three and four chapters worth of materials that they study for on top of doing their clinical’s.

On our map we dedicated space to four steps

At the end of our map planning, we moved directly into goals which changed in order to fit the Nurses criteria and gain a better understanding for how our app should work.

The Nurses stated that one of the longest processes involved with clinical’s is not grabbing the information from the hospital, but writing down the information and re-writing it into a digital format using a predefined template on Word. The word document one of the Nurses presented to us face’s its own issues.

Instead of just being able to type down answers, do research and place in information, the Nursing Students have to correctly format each piece of information. For a large amount of the digital paperwork they have to erase underscores and replace them with text and then underline that text. For their concept map they have to completely change the font and make it smaller in order to fit it into the small boxes.

They mentioned ideas that could help with this.

Goal Updates

• The ability to access resources such as Daves Drug Guide and several others that they used on a daily base for Clinical’s.
• A web or desktop version of the app so that it is more accessible and easier to type on. They worried that if the app was exclusively built for iPad that it would impede their ability to type fast and actually make the process longer.
• Drop down boxes should be implemented in order to narrow down results and auto fill other results.
• Allow for reference range lab values which would also auto fill certain information within the clinical.
• App should be created with Senior students in Mind as the Paperwork did get them to where they are now in terms of Learning

Original Goal

Make a condensed form with a digital symptom database that increases efficiency for nursing students and convenience for patients by securely saving information into client profiles

Grievances with Current System

As upset as they were with how the process of clinical work is done, they were also thankful to the extensive paperwork process. They stated that without the long hours of research and paperwork required, they wouldn’t truly understand the work they are doing as well as they understand it now, going on to claim that no longer is it necessary for them to be repeating these steps but that for new students this process is invaluable in the learning process and should still be required. We were quick to agree with this sentiment and decided that an app like this should either have specific functionality for Seniors such as the databasing aspects which the newer students would not have access too.

The biggest complaint they had with the current system is the repetition of it. Within the two days and 10 hour process they go through, most of it is repeating and re-writing information they wrote in the hospital. They begin by looking at the Patient charts and studying it, writing down the necessary information and when done — heading home for the day. The process continues as they then have to completely re-write the information into digital format and research the patients symptoms, issues, medicines, past surgeries, etc. There are large amounts of issues concerning space, formatting issues, and time management. The nurses explained to us that during their years as Nursing students its a guaranteed weight gain as they don’t have time to make home cooked meals or eat healthy. They get home from their full time jobs and go straight into work for their studies.

An additional issue they have with the process is that if the previous paperwork for a patient is not done correctly, the current Student Nurse then has to return to the Nurse who made the previous paperwork and clarify information which adds another couple of hours into the time it takes to complete clinical’s.

App Creation and What they would like to see

App Suggestions

• Dosage Recommendations based on input
• Drop Down Boxes
• For lab use
• CBC being drawn, you can click the components of CBC being used then the chosen components will populate a reference name
• Information populated based on selection
• There is no point in putting in information for normal values
• Fall Risk: Different scales of rating fall risk
• Input a method of calculating this rating through the app
• Saved patient profiles which can be pulled up into New Clinical’s.
• Automatically Pull data for NANDA Nursing Diagnosis and from Daves Drug Guide
• Pull in database data for the most common medications
• Ability to tweak database entries on the client side per user
• Drop down box for appropriate dosages per Patient (ranges chosen by previously chosen criteria).
• Route drop down boxes (Method of injection, Ei. Oral)
• Form type Application which simplifies and removes the need to edit formatting and instead can export the form into the correct format.
• When date of birth is entered, Age auto-populates.

Concerns

Here at Maryville Electronic Devices are banned from being near patient information for the safety of Patient — Doctor relationships. It is against the law to release Patient information and therefore proper procedures are in place to ensure that no mistakes can happen and no information can get let out by a student. Due to this, we learned that the app could not be used during the hospital process and instead would have to be used when they arrived home and went to re-write the information.

Personal Experience and Learning

The interview process was much more intense than I believe any of us on the UI / UX side expected it to be. The Nursing students joked several times stating “we are using this to vent.” This vent they went on significantly helped us and told us that there were in fact, numerous issues in the process of Clinical’s. Through this process, personally, I learned a lot of information that I am still processing. An example of such being that medicine isn’t exactly one size fits all. During the Clinical’s the Nurses’ have to write down multiple reasons as to why the Patient is on a certain medication, why this medication was chosen, the dosage of this medicine. Through Dave’s Drug Guide they pull in several references and symptoms that these medicines are treating or meant to treat. This whole process done by the Nursing students is created to teach them how to do this steps almost instantly as when they are on the job, they don’t get to see the patient beforehand.

Conclusion

This experience has been eye-opening, but overall I believe that we have gathered much needed information in order to create the proper app for the Nursing students.

We want to create an app that is directed towards the Senior students mostly in order to remove the formatting issues they face, isolate certain information based on criteria, and overall make the process much quicker. Personally, I would like to bring the time down for them to complete this process into a day process instead of a two-day process and ideally I would like to create an application which can cut the time in half for these Nursing students.