Question

Discuss Syndromic Surveillance on the Impact on Healthcare and Nursing

Discuss syndromic surveillance on impact on professional nursing practice related to:

o Patient safety
o Quality of care measures/monitoring
o Risk management

o Privacy, confidentiality, and security of patient data o Effectonpopulationwithintheregion
o Ethical practice
o Compliance with legal and regulatory mandates

o Organizational infrastructure and operations

Answer 1

Impact of Syndromic Surveillance on Health care and Nursing:

Syndromic Surveillance:

Surveillance refers to the continous monitoring of disease occurance. Syndromic Surveillance is the systematic and continous collection and analysis health related data, pertaining especially to the occurance of  diseases and its monitoring.  

Impact of Syndromic Surveillance ( SS ) on Health care and Nursing: The main purpose of Syndromic Surveillance is to charecterise and detect outbreak of diseases in the community in a timely manner.  

For example : Monitoring the occurance of Flaccid paralysis, in children and then reporting it as may be a symptom of Poliomyelitis. Immediately Government will initiate the measures to prevent the spread of Polio.

Then the confirmatory test wil reveal the final diagnosis of the affected child.

* Patient safety:  

SS is an effective tool for community surveillance in case of infectious diseases or outbreaks. Especially incase of an attack of bioterrorism, SS can be used as rapid screening method for large population. Rapid screening and reporting facility helps to initiate the measures for patient's safety.  

* quality of care measures/ monitoring : SS ensures quality of care and monitoring of patients. Systematic monitoring helps in early detection of symptoms and the implementation of preventive measures to the area.  

For example: Prompt monitoring of a population of a specified region revealed the presence of Dengue fever in one or two patients. Immediately the preventive measures such as Destroying the mosquito breeding places, promote the use of mosquito repellents and nets can prevent the spreading of the communicable disease, Dengue fever .

* Risk management :

In case of bioterrorism , SS can be used an effective tool for community surveillance through the methods that is highly sensitive and specified for the particular infections.

SS involves the daily monitoring of patient even after the discharge , thay can reduce the readmissions and emergency room visits.

* Effect on patient population :

SS allows the detection of symptoms of a particular infection through continous monitoring of signs and symptoms of patient population before the Laboratory confirmation. Early interventions such as isolation of the cases, preliminary medications and the patient care can be started early , so that patients as well as  others can be protected.  

For example: Monitoring the symptoms of COVID 19 among general population by observing closely at the each primary health care level, hospital, clinics and those who come to pharmacy stores to get Over the counter medications etc. By discerning the symptoms, the suspected patients can be kept separately in observation and primary treatment also can be provided, before the Laboratory results comes.

* Privacy, confidentiality and security of patient data : SS can be used to monitor the rate of disease occurance in a population. Governments should adaptor develop most effective system for the surveillance , that handle patients' data safely. Ensure the security and respect the privacy of the person under surveillance . In many developing countries, there are issues related the SS system, that the patient data have no security, any time it can be tracked or leaked by unauthorised websites and outside agencies.

* Ethical practice :

Many ethical issues are there in association with Syndromic Surveillance. Even though Government and the agencies are try to maintain the ethical basis of surveillance, still there are many breaches happen for ethical principles. It doesn't guarantee the privacy of all persons, who are getting monitored under SS. There should be a need of developing ' A guideline for ethical applications in SS' , especially in countries, where the system of SS in not upto the standard.  

* Compliance with legal and regulatory mandates: Many developed countries , a well defined and developed SS system , that is in complaince with law, is there . But many countries yet not developed the legal mandates for proper SS.

* Organisational infrastructure and operations:

Statistical algorithms and a well developed automated system for reporting the data are needed for proper Syndromic Surveillance. Complex IT ( information technology) structure should be own by the Healthcare facility for carrying out of the operations for SS.  Many developing countries lack the adequate infrastructure and computer operations, that needed for Healthcare facility to carry out continous monitoring of Disease occurance.