Uses of Statistical Information
Angela Templeton HCS 438
February 15, 2015
Monica Vargas
Uses of Statistical Information
The use of Statistical Information if very important where I currently work. I believe that statistics are an important way to know where you are and where you need to be with care. I currently work in the Public Health Department in the county where I live, I find it very vital to know where we stand in the care we deliver to the public and where we need to be going as the community changes.
In my current workplace as I stated was the Public Health Department, we rely on statistics for many different reasons and we conduct many different studies in which we collect data from the public, our patients and from records (mortality and morbidity) rates within our county.
In my workplace one example of descriptive data would be in the family planning clinic with different types of birth control. There are many forms of birth control available today and after the initial exam then the health provider gives the consumer a choice of several kinds that are appropriate for her to use. In order for the family planning clinic to keep up with inventory of birth control the use of descriptive statistics is very useful. This helps them keep the most used birth controls on hand and available for the consumer instead of blindly ordering different kinds and having them go out of date and wasted products.
The use of inferential statistics in my workplace is widely used. We have a large county so this type of statistics is very helpful when obtaining inferences about the population. We often collect inferential data from screenings in the STD clinic and the POSSE group that goes into the community to provide services. Upon obtaining the information we can evaluate what other types of services we need to provide along with how much staff is needed to work in the clinic to provide services to the community. One example recently is we have had a rise in syphilis in our community, after collecting more data from a fraction of the population, we were able to provide our services to more rural areas in our community, thus promoting the health of our community.
I really do not think that all the four levels of measurement are used in my workplace. Since the nominal variable is a categorical type of measurement, this is used at my workplace. We use this when collecting data for all types of STD’s in our community, then we are able to use the nominal variable and find out if the STD’s are more prevalent in males or females. We are then able to continue our services to the infants born to mothers that are positive for STD’s and provide treatment immediately and prevent long term effects on the infant and decrease the spread of STD’s in