Using Omaha System Data to Improve the Clinical Education Experiences of Nursing Students: The University of Cincinnati Project

Abstract

Changes in the health care delivery system suggest that graduates must be capable of working in community settings and using automated data management tools that include standardized assessments, diagnoses, interventions, and outcomes. Faculty at the College of Nursing, University of Cincinnati (UC) responded to this need by including the Omaha System in an automated format (Nightingale Tracker) in the community clinical experiences of their RN to bachelor of science of nursing students. The Omaha System was used in the traditional manner to plan and document the care for homebound senior clients. Visit data gathered from the documentation of these students were also used in a secondary manner to compare faculty clinical education instruction with the care needs of this vulnerable population. This article describes how UC faculty used the Omaha System in a highly focused way to analyze the best pedagogical practices needed for community-focused nursing education.