Nursing Grand Rounds: Shared Reflection
Systematic reflection on practice remains a vexed issue for many nurses and the context of a busy hospital environment poses a challenge. As a process to meet this challenge, Grand Rounds is worth considering. Medical practitioners have used this case study-based process over many years almost as a cultural ritual (Myint & Sabanathan, 2005: 297; Wolak, Cairns & Smith, 2008: 176). The format allows exploration of broad topics related to patient care through facilitated discussion with peers (Wolak et al., 2008 p 173). This paper shares how this format was used to encourage ongoing reflective practice, and foster clinical reasoning amongst nurses at The Maitland Hospital.
The possibility of extracting useful medical information from data collected by nurses for management purposes is investigated. An alternating decision tree for predicting pressure ulcer development is generated from nursing needs score data (NNS) usually recorded in Japanese hospitals.