Descriptive statistics examples in healthcare

By Brian Conner, PhD, RN, CNE and Emily Johnson, PhD Takeaways: 1,Healthcare professionals often calculate the following descriptive statistics for a given individual: Mean resting heart rate. Mean blood pressure. Fluctuation in weight during a certain time period. Using these metrics, healthcare professionals can gain a better understanding of the overall health of individuals.

Descriptive statistics will likely also come into play for professionals like family nurse practitioners or emergency room nurse managers. Calculating variance in blood pressure or blood sugar is one example; body mass index analysis in children seen by a family clinic is another.

To put all of this information into perspective, here’s an example of how these measures can be used in a clinical setting. rural primary care clinic has a high percentage of patients with diabetes whose glycated hemo - globin (HbA1c) levels are greater than 7% (uncontrolled HbA1c) and body mass index (BMI) is over 30.In health care, all four types can be used. For example: Descriptive analytics can be used to determine how contagious a virus is by examining the rate of positive tests in a specific population over time. Diagnostic analytics can be used to diagnose a patient with a particular illness or injury based on the symptoms they’re experiencing.