Do you believe these statistics? why or why not.

The first variable in healthcare that I work with is temperatures of my post-surgical patients.Solet's say thatI had 3 normal temperatures of 36.7, 36.1, 37.2.The mean of my temperatures would be36.7 Celsiuswith astandard deviation (being the measure of spread) of 0.45 Celsius.This is a low standard deviation and an expected variation.

The second variable that I routinely work with is skin prep times.In the OR, we have Chloraprep sticks that require 3 minutes of contact time before draping the patient.While we aresupposedto wait 3 minutes, often we lose track of time and drape too soon or a few minutes after 3 minutes.Solet's say I have5 surgeries.I wait 2 minutes for the first surgery, 2.5 minutes for my second, 3 minutes for my third surgery, 3.5 minutes for my fourth, and 4 minutes for my last surgery.This would give me a mean of 3 minutes and a standard deviation of .71, also written as 1 minute and 11 seconds.

Both of these examples would resemble a bell curve.Out of these two examples, post-op temperatures would be more likely to have a larger standard deviation.I could explain this by understanding that low temperatures are common after surgery as the room is cold, your body loses heat due to anesthesia and your body has been exposure for periods of time.

References

Chamberlain University. (2021). Week 5 Lesson: The Normal Distribution

Fowler, J., Jarvis, P., & Chevannes, M. (2002).Practical statistics for nursing and health care. ProQuestEbookCentralhttps://ebookcentral-proquest-com.chamberlainuniversity.idm.oclc.org(Links to an external site.)

Holmes, A.,Illowsky, B., & Dean, S. (2017). Introductory business statistics. OpenStax