USD President's Report and Honor Roll of Donors 1996

graduate nurses are expected to know when they earn their degrees, which gave the group a starting point for the knowl- edge base. She also brought info rmation from a different area of the country, which affects some dec isions. Optimum oxygen saturation at sea leve l, for example, differs from the optimum level at other altitudes, Bond points out. That difference needed to be factored into the software. Bond also contributed by researching spec ific symptoms fo r the critical decision process, evaluating the computer's help system and conducting literature searches. Jones believes strongly in involving a graduate student in every project she works on . "I think it makes the educational process more human and more applicable," she explains. "Graduate education should not be lecturing to students all the time." G OING PLACES While the project's cardiovascular module is nearly comp lete - it's in its fifth prototype, is currently being site-tested at an Army medical center, and will be tested at ScrippsHealth - the diabetes module is still in the developmental stages. Jones expects more modules will be developed as funding becomes available. With the delivery of the cardiovascular module, one of the first groups to benefit from the USD nursing expertise will be USD students. Because of Jones' and C lark's participation, the nursing school will get a site license to use the software for student training. So, while Jones and C lark are handling tests, proj ects and student consultations at Alcala Park, their exper- tise will be ava ilable to nurses here and across the nation, giving the professors the enviable position of being in many places at once.

DECISIONS, D ECISIONS When tests, projects and student consultations start piling up, every professor laments the inability to be in two places at once. Colette Jones, however, is completing a project that will soon put her in hundreds of places at once. And just like all of her ventures, she has taken a student with her. Jones is the USD project director for an interactive soft- ware program that will help nurses identify appropriate treat- ment, education or ocher interventions for patients with cardiovascular problems or diabetes. The nursing dec ision software is being deve loped under a Department of Defense contract by Point Loma Industries, which subcontracted with USO, San Diego State University and ScrippsHealth for nurs- ing and engineering expertise. When completed, nurses across the nation will have chis expert ise at their fingertips, leading them through the dec ision- making process from symptoms to treatment options. Jones, a professor at USD's Philip Y. Hahn School of Nursing, is qu ick to point out that the software is being developed as a team, which includes from USD Mary Jo C lark, assoc iate dean of the nursing school, and doctoral student Elaine Bond. CRITICAL CARE The project started in 1993 with the first funding proposa l. Once funding was approved , the nurses and engineers met once a week to construct the cardiovascu lar module. The advanced nurses - all of whom are clinical specialists or nurse practitioners - identified the areas of cardiovascular info rma- tion necessary fo r critical decis ion processing. The engineers translated chat expertise into a user-friendly computer program called C linical Assessment Recording Environment, or CARE. "This program brings the most recent technology to the nov ice nurse as well as those nurses who may not be experts in a particular area," says Jones, a nurse practitioner. "You may get someone who's been in obstetrics for three years, for exam- ple. She may be a great nurse but hasn't had cardiovascular experience. This can be used to help update her skills." The end users aren't the only ones to learn from this project. Jones and her associates learned a great deal as they exp lored how they make decisions and researched the most current treatments in health care today. The collegial nature of the group meant chat each participant became a teacher during the process, including graduate fe llow Elaine Bond, who was on sabbatical from Brigham Young University 's College of Nursing to pursue her doctoral degree at USO. Bond brought to the table expertise about what under-

As nurses take on stronger decision- making roles in the health care industry, more sophisticated tools are developed to assist them. USD nursing professors and a graduate fellow teamed with other local nursing, engineering and computer software experts to produce interactive decision software for nurses. Currently concentrating on cardiovascular problems and diabetes, the software leads nurses through the analysis of a patient's complaints, from examination of symptoms to education or treatment. As the team has constructed the program for nurses 1n the field, they've learned a few lessons themselves.