Statistics in the Workplace

Statistics in the Workplace

Elizabeth Bouchard

NUR438

March 14, 2011

Ann Impens

Statistics in the Workplace

Statistics are used almost everywhere that we go. They are part of our every day lives. We use statistics when we make decisions. Almost every day we hear and see information on the television, radio or even in the newspaper about products and their uses. Would you use a product that is most likely to cause cancer? We use statistics at home and at work. Statistics can be described as data collected and analyzed to come up with conclusions from an experiment (Google.com).

I use statistics in my workplace for quality assurance purposes. As an assistant supervisor I have to perform chart reviews and occasional hospitalization reviews on our clients. I collect the data and the Director of Nursing analyzes the data. The end results are presented at staff meetings. If there are concerns, she addresses them with the staff. We perform monthly chart reviews. We use a special form that has three columns; yes, no and not applicable. When the chart reviews are all turned in, the columns are all tallied and percentages are formed. If pain assessments are not done, the director focuses on this portion of our assessments and how we need to improve on our charting. Sometimes, we need a refresher on how to do an accurate pain assessment or wound assessment.

Descriptive statistics are what you use to write out and explain the data (LAERD Statistics, n.d.). Descriptive statistics is the analysis of the data you found. It could be the number of patients who went into the hospital a week after being placed on care versus the patients that did not go into the hospital that week. These statistics can be placed in a chart or graph for review. It also could be the number of charts reviewed with incomplete pain assessments versus the complete pain assessments.

Inferential statistics are the conclusions of the data (LAERD Statistics, n.d.). It could be the probability or predictions from the data we collected. This could be the data I collected from the charts reviewed for the hospitalizations. We could say that four out of 10 clients went into the hospital the first week they went on care. That could be 40% of our clients. I could predict that this could be a pattern that may continue if we did not try to come up with a plan to decrease the hospitalizations.

I could say we use the four different measurements nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio at work when doing our quality assurance reviews. Nominal describes a label. We could use this as a certain chart. Ordinal means ranking. We could use this when we receive our