Application of Statistics in Healthcare: Health, Medicine, Nursing Research Paper

Application of Statistics in Healthcare
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Application of Statistics in Healthcare
Every field is currently generating more data at a faster rate than they did before. With increased data, the need for statistical skills increases. In the healthcare sector, for example, the need for individuals with a knack for statistics continues to gain in relevance. Statistics has proven to be useful in the healthcare sector, especially when it comes to predicting outcomes, supporting the decision-making process, and developing patterns that are crucial in health promotion. Today, more data is being generated in the healthcare sector than ever before. But, how is this data beneficial? How is it helping enhance healthcare outcomes? Is it helping promote health and enhance leadership in healthcare? Well, below is an elucidation of how statistics in healthcare is playing a crucial role in enhancing the quality, safety, health promotion, and leadership in healthcare. Also, a day-to-day perspective of how statistical data is obtained, used, and how it supports decision-making will be provided.
Application of statistics in healthcare – Quality, Safety, Health Promotion, and leadership
The quality of a service is determined by different factors including performance. The performance of the healthcare sector greatly influences people’s perception of the field. By collecting and making use of statistical data, healthcare organizations can enhance the quality of service they provide. Raheja, Dubey, and Chawda (2017) write that for healthcare organizations to remain competitive, they must use “data to positively affect the quality of health care.” These organizations must listen to the comments made by their patients, families of patients, and other stakeholders. Such data is quite crucial as it can help in the identification and enhancement of areas of concern. For example, more patients could be suffering from hospital-related infections. By collecting such data, a healthcare organization can focus its attention towards eradicating this problem, thus improving quality and enhancing safety of patients.
Safety of patients is tied to the quality of care offered in an organization. A healthcare organization cannot claim to offer quality care while there are no safety measures in place to protect patients. The World Health Organization (2019) reports that unsafe care is a leading cause of death in the world. Also, it reports that “134 million adverse events occur in hospitals in low- and middle-income countries, due to unsafe care, resulting in 2.6 million deaths.” These are disturbing statistics considering that the WHO reports that most of these events are preventable. Healthcare organizations must be wary of such st...