Evaluation of a decision tree for management of chronic wounds.

Nurses routinely make complex clinical decisions under conditions of uncertainty. They collect large, unwieldy data sets in the process of making these clinical decisions. To assist nurses in collecting and organizing data and in making complex clinical decisions, some nursing scholars recommend decision support systems. One such support system, a decision tree leads the nurse from general to specific assessments and ultimately to a decision choice or outcome. In this study, a decision tree was examined for its utility in promoting accuracy in decision making for management of chronic wounds among home care nurses. Home care nurses who used the decision tree made better decisions about staging and product choices for chronic wounds. More research is necessary to discover whether decision trees for the management of chronic wounds translate into improved client outcomes.