The Benefits and Challenges Associated with Involving A Nurse Leader on An Implementation Team for Health Information Technology

 

Benefits

Nurse informaticist provide useful information to help the team keep to the current technology. Nurse leaders are aware of the technological changes that are essential for improving the quality of care. They interact with the patients, nurses, and administrators daily; hence, they can identify the technological gaps that need to be filled by the new system. Therefore, they can suggest to the team and also provide feedback on the success of the program.

Secondly, nurse leaders can identify issues with the system at the implementation stage enabling the specialists to find the solution early enough. Since the system is developed for nurses, the nurse’s leader will identify problems when the item is still not in practical use. This can save the specialists from jeopardizing the health of the patients who will be using the program. In most cases, the system appears effective at the implementation; however, some errors can be detected upon use.

Challenges

The main challenges of using nurse leaders on implementation are its costs and the prolonged duration. Involving them increases the budgets because they will have to be paid like all other specialists working on the project, and this will increase the costs since they were not included in the initial plan (Hussey & Kennedy, 2016). Besides, the project duration will lengthen because the nurse leaders will be given time to check the system’s operation, and this may halt the specialist’s activities since they have to wait for the leader’s feedback.

The Role of the Nurse Informaticist in Systems Development and Implementation

The use of technology has facilitated healthcare providers’ work, especially the nurses who are the majority in the clinic and usually in touch with the patients. Even though technology enhances patients’ health and safety, it has introduced additional roles to the nurses. For instance, nurse informatics is currently engaged in system development to help the specialists produce a successful program. They provide solutions and insight to enable the developers to identify problems that might hinder the operation of SDLC. In short, their main role in the hospitals is to provide a documentation system that has often affected the operation of the healthcare facilities for a long time. The purpose of this section is to highlight the role of the nurse informaticist in each part of systems development and implementation.

Planning and Requirements Definition

Planning is crucial in every department as it helps the programmers to foresee future outcomes. It usually guarantees a successful product free from any system malfunctions. In regards to SDLC, the informatics nurse provides the specialists with a healthcare plan that needs to be fulfilled (Thomas et al., 2016). The material provided by the lead nurse helps in producing the best approaches that can be used to create a program. During the requirement definition, the nurse in charge of informatics highlights all the necessary instruments needed to formulate some fused outputs into the system. The specialist, therefore, proposes how to include the inputs provided.

Analysis

The analysis stage is composed of establishing the workflows and processes in the system. It also helps determine whether the objectives were met and all the procedures followed to the latter. Moreover, an evaluation is done to establish the possible improvements that can make the system works better (Hussey & Kennedy, 2016). Therefore, nurse informatics can be of importance to the specialist in discussing and explaining the mechanisms used in the previous program. As a result, the system specialist will identify areas that need adjustments and those that should be excluded.

Design of the new system

The overall appearance of the system is constructed in this stage. The teams involved in implementation provide a decision that will ensure the success of the system. For instance, pseudo-codes and reports are generated to establish the potential shortfalls that may be experienced (Thomas et al., 2016). Therefore, the nurse informaticist plays a role by inspecting the flowcharts provided by the specialists to check if they can produce the expected results.

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Implementation

Implementation entails coding the language to create a successful system. Since the graduate nurses have some basic knowledge of programming, they will help the specialist identify areas that are not correctly coded according to the flow chart if an incorrect output is provided. Additionally, they can organize meetings with the junior nurses to get fe

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