Choosing Wisely

A national campaign led by the American Board of Internal Medicine, Choosing Wisely® is focused on educating the general public about making informed health care decisions. The campaign began in April 2012 with the goal of promoting communication that would help patients choose care that is supported by evidence, avoids unnecessary care by avoiding duplicate tests or procedures that have already been completed, does not cause harm and is truly needed to guide care. Examples of unnecessary care might include prescribing antibiotics for conditions typically associated with a virus or completing full body diagnostic computed tomography (CT) scan for minor or single system trauma. Currently, there are more than 70 specialty society partner health care provider organizations that have released a list of tests or procedures to consider.

Texas is engaged in executing a multi-year pilot initiative focused on assessing nurses’ knowledge of the Choosing Wisely® campaign and then educating nurses based on survey findings. Multiple stakeholders, both nationally and across the state of Texas, are involved in the successful implementation of this pilot project. Texas participants in the project include the Texas Nurses Association, the Texas Organization of Nurse Executives and the Texas Team Advancing Health through Nursing, a state action coalition focused on achieving the Institute of Medicine Future of Nursing goals (Texas Team).

The first step in the campaign was to develop and conduct a survey to assess the knowledge of professional registered nurses (RNs) and advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) across the state of Texas. The survey was conducted in late 2015. Over a period of approximately six weeks, 374 nurses completed the survey. Of the participants, 295 were RNs and 79 were APRNs.

Click Here to see results of the survey.