Discuss ways that nursing informatics could be applied to al

Discuss ways that nursing informatics could be applied to all areas of professional nursing practice, including clinical practice, administration, education, and research. Provide examples of each. What do you see as the biggest significance of nursing informatics, and why?

Solution

Ans:

Nursing informatics is a combination of computer science, information science and nursing science designed to assist in the management and processing of nursing data, information and knowledge to support the practice of nursing and the delivery of nursing care.

The American Nurses Association (ANA, 2008) defines Nursing informatics as “a specialty that integrates nursing science, computer science, and information science to manage and communicate data, information, and knowledge in nursing practice. Nursing informatics facilitates the integration of data, information and knowledge to support patients, nurses and other providers in their decision-making in all roles and settings. This support is accomplished through the use of information structures, information processes, and information technology.”

Nurses who decides to take this specialty takes the role of Informatics Nurse Specialist. Other titles include or Nurse Informaticist, Clinical Analyst, Director of Clinical Informatics, or Clinical Informatics Coordinator.

Significance of Nursing Informatics

Nursing Informatics can be applied to all areas of nursing practice, which include; clinical practice, administration, education, and research. Below are some examples of how nursing informatics, information technology and computers, are used to support various areas of nursing practice.

Nursing Clinical Practice (Point-of-Care Systems and Clinical Information Systems)

·         Work lists to remind staff of planned nursing interventions

·         Computer generated client documentation

·         Electronic Medical Record (EMR) and Computer-Based Patient Record (CPR)

·         Monitoring devices that record vital signs and other measurements directly into the client record (electronic medical record)

·         Computer – generated nursing care plans and critical pathways

·         Automatic billing for supplies or procedures with nursing documentation

·         Reminders and prompts that appear during documentation to ensure comprehensive charting

Nursing Administration (Health Care Information Systems)

·         Automated staff scheduling

·         E-mail for improved communication

·         Cost analysis and finding trends for budget purposes

·         Quality assurance and outcomes analysis

Nursing Education

·         Computerized record-keeping

·         Computerized-assisted instruction

·         Interactive video technology

·         Distance Learning-Web based courses and degree programs

·         Internet resources-CEU’s and formal nursing courses and degree programs

·         Presentation software for preparing slides and handouts-PowerPoint and MS Word

Nursing Research

·         Computerized literature searching-CINAHL, Medline and Web sources

·         The adoption of standardized language related to nursing terms-NANDA, etc.

·         The ability to find trends in aggregate data, that is data derived from large population groups-Statistical Software, SPSS