Since identifying and researching our topic, my knowledge of tracking intake and output in the hospital setting has grown tremendously. I learned that it is more than just a method of what a patient is drinking in fluids and what the resulting output of urine in, but it is a way of monitoring how a patients condition is progressing. You can determine if someone is getting too much fluids or not enough, as well as how the kidneys are functioning. My perspective on intake and output changes completely because I realized that strict I&Os are not a useless task in nursing care, but they can results in early detection of patient deterioration, patient improvement, and more.
Through the literature review, we determined that education is the key to more accurate and complete intake and output tracking. If nurses do not know why they are tracking intake and output they are going to be less likely to do it which can change the way the patient receive care. What we found in the literature review aligned closely with our proposal and what we had learned from the reading, so not many changes were made to our topic or proposal. All the articles we used emphasized the need for education in order to track I&Os better, and each one suggested a way to accomplish that. These findings will help guide my future nursing practice, because whether the floor provides education or not on I&Os, I already have a baseline knowledge that will help me. I know how important I&Os are, so it is not something I will neglect in my practice. Our team was successful in finding sources that shared similar ideas, but each had their own take on how to educate nurses on I&Os. Also, we successfully found sources that worked cohesively and highlighted what can go wrong if you are not doing I&Os correctly. As a team, we did not face many difficulties with our proposal or literature review. Because our sources worked so well together it made it easier for us to work as a team to come up with a topic proposal. We also were able to bounce ideas off of each other easily and everyone was very opened minded about how we were going to do the project which made it very easy to make decisions. Overall, we have been very successful.
