Date of Award

5-2022

Document Type

Dissertation - Campus Access Only

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice

Degree Discipline

Nursing

Abstract

Every year approximately 400,000 diagnostic lumbar punctures (LPs) are performed by neurologists and advanced practice providers (APPs) in the United States, making it one of the most common hospital procedures (Neiman, 2021). Initial LPs are performed at the bedside using anatomic palpation. Upon a failed bedside attempt, patients are referred to Diagnostic Imagine to have the procedure performed with fluoroscopy guidance. A Fluoroscopic Guided Lumbar Puncture (FL LP) request is made following a failed bedside attempt or if the patient has exclusion criteria. Detailed documentation and completion of the FL LP Referral Request are essential for prompt acceptance and scheduling of patients to prevent diagnostic testing and chemotherapy treatment delays. There are seven core questions deemed necessary for FL LP referrals however, many APPs were bypassing the seven questions and finalizing their order.

The purpose of this project was to improve the documentation compliance of FL LP Referral Requests to prevent diagnostic and treatment delays.This project employed a comparative, pre-post intervention, non-experimental design. The intervention was an educational presentation on the importance of accurate and complete documentation to APPs who commonly refer patients for FL LPs. The goal was to improve compliance in completing the form from the previous average of 57.8% found during a random chart audit in the summer of 2021 to at least 85% in the three months following the intervention (January 1, 2022-March 18, 2022) or until the sample size was obtained.

The outcome of this evidence-based practice project confirmed a significant difference in the FL LP request documentation compliance. The results of the Chi-square test were significant based on an alpha value, .05, χ2(1) = 12.58, p < .001, suggesting improvement in compliance related to the educational intervention. Compliance rats of 57.8% in the summer of 2021 were improved to 78.33% during the first quarter of 2022. This improvement is expected to benefit efficient in the clinical area, decrease diagnostic and treatment delays and improve overall patient satisfaction and outcomes. The findings were consistent with improvements reported by other research studies that evaluated documentations compliance.

Committee Chair/Advisor

Vivian Dawkins

Committee Member

Sharisse Hebert

Committee Member

Chloe Gaines

Committee Member

Ruby A. Benjamin-Garner

Publisher

Prairie View A&M University

Rights

© 2021 Prairie View A & M University

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Date of Digitization

11/13/2024

Contributing Institution

John B Coleman Library

City of Publication

Prairie View

MIME Type

Application/PDF

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