Application Of Nursing Minimum Data Set (Nmds) and Uniform Hospital Discharge Data Set (Uhdds) To Describe Nursing Care Of Patients With Dementia

Park, Myong Hwa

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify nursing care for elderly patients with dementia using Uniform Hospital Discharge Data Set (UHDDS) and Nursing Minimum Data Set (NMDS) of a community hospital in the United States Mid-west. The study sample included 222 elderly patients with dementia who were discharged in the year 1998. The findings were as follows. 1. The proportion of dementia in this study was 8.5% among total elderly patients. The most common associated disease was hypertension (n=40, 18.0%), followed by urinary tract infection (n=30, 13.5%). 2. The most frequent nursing diagnoses were altered health maintenance (n=158, 71.2%), knowledge deficit (n=150, 67.6%), potential for injury (n=119, 53.6%), potential for infection (n=102, 45.9%), pain (n=89, 40.1%), impaired physical mobility (n=78, 35.1%), and altered thought process (n=64, 28.8%). 3. The most frequent interventions were discharge planning (n=138, 62.1%), surveillance safety (n=86, 38.8%), fall prevention (n=78, 34.9%), teaching: disease process (n=74, 33.1%), learning facilitation (n=66, 29.5%), and infection protection (n=65, 29.3%). The results identified the need for continued work on the linkage of the nursing care elements, including nursing diagnosis, nursing intervention, and nursing-sensitive outcome, using the standardized languages.