According to the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), nursing informatics is a field that integrates computer science, information science, and nursing science to communicate and manage wisdom, data, data, and knowledge in the nursing field (Peltonen et al., 2018). Nursing informatics is the driving force behind the design and development, implementation, and optimization of electronic medical records, computerized practitioner order entry, nursing clinical documentation, and point-of-care clinical decision support.
The role of nurse informatics is a technical one. The nurse Informatics use technology and data routinely to monitor patient care initiatives, systems, and program. They analyze data to check what is and what is not working. Nurse informaticist uses the findings to implement change, suggest improvements, and lead projects (All Nursing Schools, 2020). More so, nurse Informaticists research, develop and implement new technology. They are charged with training nursing staff to make good use of technology, respond to their questions, and monitor outcomes. Nursing informaticists receive feedback from the nursing staff and use the data to determine if the technology has enhanced patient outcomes (All Nursing Schools, 2020). Routine tasks handled by nurse informaticists as reported by HIMSS include resource management, establishing system-related policies and procedures, analyzing and optimizing performance, project management, system development, quality initiative planning and reporting, as well as supporting and training the nursing staff (All Nursing Schools, 2020).
Many healthcare organizations and systems have benefited from nursing informatics. For instance, Carolinas Healthcare System (CHS) went live with a 3-year optimization project in 2016 to simplify the Electronic Health Records in acute care. The system has been using Cerner tech for over a decade and wanted to upgrade the systems to help nurses use the technology and make things easier. The goal of this move was to organize tech in a user-friendly system, reduce documentation, and alleviate duplicate records. By leveraging nursing informatics, CHS saw a 14% improvement in on-time medication administration, 20% reduction in documentation time for head-to-toe assessment, and improved the quality of each assessment with 10 new screening tools that generated annual cost savings of $60K for third parties (Davis, 2018).
Nurse informaticists at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, designed and operationalized an algorithm for recognizing domestic violence and red flags for human trafficking (Nelson & Parker, 2019). This system fits well into the emergency department nurse workflow, includes a narrative to use if the patient screens as positive, and offer step-by-step instructions to the nurse. Patients get immediate help. Informatics nurses at Texas Health Resources in Dallas-Fort Worth have uncovered how sending vital signs from the machine directly into the electronic medical records on surgical/medical and telemetry units save manual documentation time daily (Nelson & Parker, 2019). In a survey done to show how informatics support quality nursing care, Sendir et al (2019) found that 70% of nurse informaticists have helped organizations improve their medical device integration programs and those organizations that employ informaticists believe that it has improved patient safety and reduced near-miss adverse events.
To deliver better quality care, nursing informaticists must work in the same direction as nurses and other professionals. Informatics nurses facilitate communication between IT and clinical staff. They speak dual languages, health care and technology, and pay attention to designing strategies for IT procurement, optimization, implementation, and maintenance in collaboration with other operational and clinical leaders. They watch how providers are utilizing the technology so they can identify gaps or problems and create solutions. Besides, they support identifying trends and correlations as well as support data analysis that allow for decision-making.
Impact of Full Nurse Engagement in Health Care Technology
Nurse informaticists play a maj
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