Nurse informatics possess diverse skills and expertise that spread across a wide range of sub-specialties. Nurse informatics skills are essential in systems development and implementation, clinical care, research, decision support, continuous quality improvement, project management workflow analysis, and human-computer interaction (Seh et al., 2020). Nursing informatics is a science with a high potential to enhance health care quality, safety, and efficiency (Kamerer & McDermott, 2020). Its potential can be attributed to the act that it is a combination of three science concepts namely information science, cognitive science, and computer science, with an overall emphasis on nursing science
Issue/Concern in Nursing Informatics
However, nurse informatics faces various changes in their work line, which affects their work at the micro, meso, and macro levels. One common concern in the nursing informatics track is Data Breach. Advances in ICT have enabled healthcare data to be more digitized, distributive, and mobile (Kamerer & McDermott, 2020). Nurse informatics have the role of protecting health information by ensuring confidentiality, privacy, and security. The risks and costs attributed to data security breach are very high, yet the confidentiality of health data of millions of patients are at risk (Seh et al., 2020). These factors make data security nursing informatics the biggest concern today and a challenge for which communication and innovation are of the utmost importance (Kamerer & McDermott, 2020). Data breach is attributed to cybercrime, which is a rising concern for health systems in the US and globally. Cybercrimes in healthcare have considerably increased in type, impact, and frequency.
Data breach impacts the health system at the micro-level since it negatively affects the ability of providers to deliver care, patient privacy, and the security of healthcare organizations. For instance, cyber threats compromise patient information, prohibit access information systems crucial to nursing and other health professionals’ job functions, and destruct system and patient information (Seh et al., 2020). The mesosystem level is affected by data breach through administrative cyber threats, which result in a breakdown of day-to-day operations, protocols, and policies. It also limits access to data that enables hospitals to develop and implement quality improvement initiatives that continuously monitor outcomes to ensure that organizational targets are met.
At the macro level, Data breach has affected the access of patient data, which enables the identification and management of disease outbreaks. It also affects the development of population health initiatives that target specific population areas based on the analysis of the health information of that population (Seh et al., 2020). Besides, data breach limits the ability to collect and merge multiple organizational datasets promptly.
Addressing Data Breach at the Microsystem Level
The challenge of Data breach can be addressed at the microsystem level by ensuring that patient data stored in the system is as secure as is possible. For instance, as a nurse informatic, I can ensure that passwords or codes are used only by staff to whom the password or code is assigned. Health team members can be instructed never to allow others to use their code or password to gain entry into the system (Kamerer & McDermott, 2020). They should also be cautioned never to gain information for unauthorized use or to document for a person assigned that code. Furthermore, I can impose clear codes of conduct for all health team members to prohibit these actions. The proposed intervention is expected to foster proper procedures and policies to access patient data to prevent and identify potential threats (Kamerer & McDermott, 2020). It will also lower the incidence of data loss from cyber-attacks and prevent legalities that arise when a third party accesses patients’ data.
References
Kamerer, J. L., & McDermott, D. (2020). Cybersecurity: Nurses on the front line of prevention and education. Journal of Nursing Regulation, 10(4), 48-53. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2155-8256 (20)30014-4
Seh, A. H., Zarour, M., Alenezi, M., Sarkar, A. K., Agrawal, A., Kumar, R., & Khan, R. A. (2020). Healthcare data breaches: Insights and implications. Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland), 8(2), 133. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare8020133
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