Introduction:
I work at Cardinal Glennon Children’s hospital. This is a hospital designated to care for children between the ages of 0 through 21 years of age. It is located within the city limits of Saint Louis, Missouri. I am a registered nurse (RN) in the Emergency Department (ED). Our hospital is a 190 inpatient bed hospital (“Cardinal Glennon”, 2015). They also provide specialty care and outpatient services. The ED specifically has a 24 bed unit and is a Level 1 pediatric trauma center. According to our website we see and treat nearly 41,000 children per year in the ED (“Cardinal Glennon”, 2015). It is truly a fascinating place to work and I learn something new every day that I am there.
How Statistics are used at my Workplace:
At Cardinal Glennon, there are various forms of statistics used. Like many other hospitals, the administration keeps track of numbers for all sorts of reasons. A few examples are as follows; the amount of infections that are related to central lines, how much profit was made each year, how many patients were seen in the ED each day, week, month and year, patient satisfaction scores, handwashing rates of co-workers, amount of blood cultures drawn each month and the amount that were determined contaminated. Those are just a few that matter to nursing but I am sure each individual department has their own forms of statistics they track. After these different sets of data are complied, some form of chart or graph is used to make an impact on the employees. This helps show the real data and make it easier for us to see just how much the numbers change each month. Of course an action plan is then formed to help us be able to “better” our numbers to reflect better or more cautious care. These charts and graphs can be an eye opener for the nurses a lot of times. As a bedside nurse, we are not always good at thinking of the numbers. Thankfully