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

An Introduction to Nursing informatics

Nursing informatics (NI) is the specialty that integrates nursing science with multiple information management and analytical sciences to identify, define, manage, and communicate data, information, knowledge, and wisdom in nursing practice. NI supports nurses, consumers, patients, the inter-professional healthcare team, and other stakeholders in their decision-making in all roles and settings to achieve desired outcomes. This support is accomplished through the use of information structures, information processes, and information technology.

Scope of Nursing Practice

Utilization of nursing knowledge through the application of critical thinking, judgment and skill. It is grounded in the principles of nursing, medicine, social and public health sciences and expressed as the art of nursing.

Adoption of a holistic approach to care, addressing the biological, psychological, social, and spiritual needs of clients.

Promotion of client self-reliance and self-determination by actively involving the client as a partner in all aspects of care.

Use of nursing theories to define and organize practice and the nursing process to comprehensively assess, diagnose, plan, implement, evaluate, and document client care.

Application of the model of nursing care delivery adopted within the agency or practice setting.

Collaboration with other members of the health care team and partnering with diverse sectors of the community.

Advocating for and/or creating quality health care systems, population health, and healthy public policy.

Applications 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