tang - reduction in night time vitals

tang - reduction in night time vitals

by Victoria Tang -

1. Describe the study design you will employ in order to determine if your intervention has had an effect on the outcome variable of interest.

Interrupted time series will be used to measure the effect of intervention on number of night time vital signs checked on low risk patients.

2. Define the unit-of-analysis for your main outcome evaluation, the minimum meaningful effect size, and the sample size necessary to detect this effect size. 

Main outcome evaluation: night time vitals checked on low risk patients before and after intervention, which would be at the patient level

Minimal meaningful effect size: 20% change 

 

Re: tang - reduction in night time vitals

by Nicole Ling -

Hey Vicki, I wonder if your main outcome should less of a process measure, but more of something like patient satisfaction with sleep quality/hospitalization etc. It's nice because interrupted time series you could do multiple measurements over nights and afterward implement the vital sign change - and see if that makes a difference in their satisfaction scores. Otherwise, it seems, if you can make the change, that is important, but the satisfaction measure gets more at the "so what" of why you care about this project.

Re: tang - reduction in night time vitals

by Grace -

Hi Viki,

I ran into the same issue because originally I was thinking about using # of referrals as my unit of analysis and that would be at the provider level. I ultimately changed mine to depression scores at the patient level. I wonder if the completion of taking night time vitals is actually a provider unit of analysis. Is there something else at the patient level you could examine?