Campus Location

Dallas Campus (Online)

Date of Award

3-2020

Document Type

DNP Project

Department

Nursing

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice

Committee Chair or Primary Advisor

Roneisa Matero

Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor

Linda Gibson

Third Committee Member or Committee Reader

Tonja Hartjes

Abstract

Abstract

With increasing national health care expenditures, different methods of reducing health care costs, along with supportive evidence-based research, are essential. This research will lead to changes in clinical practice standards including the utilization of tools by emergency room and hospitalist providers to reduce costs by decreasing the length of stay for acute chest pain admissions. The researcher utilized a retrospective review of charts for participants admitted into the acute care setting with the primary diagnosis of acute chest pain, with a focus on determining whether an initial calculation of a HEART Score risk stratification variable was completed and if there was a correlated relationship with reduced hospital length of stay. A total of 86 randomly selected participant charts were reviewed, and a specific data set was collected as determined in the methodology of the project. The analysis was completed by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (Version 24.0) software for the calculation of an independent samples t test, which was used to analyze the differences between each acute chest pain admission, with and without the HEART Score calculation, and the associated length of stay. The study analysis did not support the hypothesis, as the null hypothesis was not rejected based on statistical findings. Other study findings assisted in further development of health care changes for leaders, managers, providers, and nursing teams. Further research should be conducted with a larger sample size, in an institution with greater ethnic diversity, and with an additional qualitative component to support the existing evidence-based research that supports a correlation between the variables in this study.

Keywords: acute chest pain, coronary artery disease (CAD), HEART Score and pathway, hospitalist provider, major adverse cardiac event (MACE)

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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