Information in Clinical Patient Care

Care providers generate data as they carry out various tasks. These data are available for use when performing other operations. This type of data is termed as operations data. Care providers also use other available pre-prepared information or analyzed data as a source of information. This group of data is called reference information or data. Another form of data is research data. This can be derived from operations data (as in a retrospective study) or can be obtained through a purposeful additional data collection activity (as in a prospective study). Research data over and above operations data are usually collected during predefined periods for a sample of the clients and often require additional activities and resources.

Based on the above discussion, when performing any activity, the care provider needs to ask him / herself two questions relating to data:

· What data is required to perform the work process successfully?

· What data would the work process generate?