Discuss why it is important for a person working in health care to understand statistical concepts. Provide an example of how statistical data is used in your organization or specialty area today and what you are expected to do with this information as a practitioner.

What Is Statistics And Why It Is Important To Health Sciences?-Solution

Statistics in Health Sciences

Statistical concepts are important in the health care setting. Hayat et al. (2021) define statistics as collecting, organizing, analyzing, interpreting, and presenting numerical data. Healthcare practitioners should demonstrate high competency levels in statistical concepts to understand the risk factors for different communities, monitor diseases, assess the impacts of policy changes, and assess the safety and quality of health services they offer their clients (Kim, Mallory & Valerio, 2020). For example, our organization uses statistical data to recognize special risk groups, plan and implement public health programs, and evaluate their success. Yoo et al. (2019) reported that statistics knowledge could enable nurses to determine if the reported findings can be generalized to the specific patient population.(Statistics in Health Sciences Essay Example)

As a practitioner, I will use my statistics knowledge to understand the development process of a specific disease, uncover its etiology, and evaluate novel approaches for preventing and controlling its spread to other community members. Nurses with statistical knowledge can successfully implement evidence-based practice and understand and interpret major clinical research findings (Hayat et al., 2021). Nonetheless, I will continue using statistics in my clinical practice to draw reasonable and accurate inferences from the quantitative data collected during a patient assessment to make sound decisions about the most appropriate treatment option. For example, I will use descriptive statistics for a patient, such as weight, age, and gender, during diagnosis to prevent errors and bias. With appropriate biostatistics knowledge, healthcare practitioners can predict behaviors of different health problems, such as flu, their mortality rates, define its symptoms, and the time of the year when people might be vulnerable to the infection.(Statistics in Health Sciences Essay Example)

References

Hayat, M. J., Kim, M., Schwartz, T. A., & Jiroutek, M. R. (2021). A study of statistics knowledge among nurse faculty in schools with research doctorate programs. Nursing Outlook, 69(2), 228-233.

Kim, M., Mallory, C., & Valerio, T. (2020). Statistics for evidence-based practice in nursing. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.

Yoo, J. Y., Kim, J. H., Kim, J. S., Kim, H. L., & Ki, J. S. (2019). Clinical nurses’ beliefs, knowledge, organizational readiness and level of implementation of evidence-based practice: The first step to creating an evidence-based practice culture. PloS one, 14(12), 193-198.