Nurs-fpx 4040 Assessment 1 – Nursing Informatics in Health Care

Nurs-fpx 4040 Assessment 1 – Nursing Informatics in Health Care

Nursing Informatics has been evolving for the last 40 years into a very important part of the Healthcare industry. Its roots, in the opinions of some, have been traced as far back as Florence Nightingale. Computers have been used in healthcare since the 1950s. The establishment of Capitol Area Roundtable on Informatics in Nursing was established in 1982, which was a starting point for formalizing the field(Blažun Vošner et al., 2020). The American Nursing Association’s “Nursing Informatics Scope and Standards of Practice” identifies nursing informatics as “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”(Association, 2018, p. 1). A Nurse Informaticist is skilled in the field of healthcare and combines this with a knowledge of healthcare technology. Working in collaboration with the Interdisciplinary team as well as the team responsible for information technology and record keeping, the nurse informaticist allows the healthcare organization to provide care using the most current evidence-based practice staying up to date as information evolves. It also provides efficient and accurate healthcare record keeping. (Courtney & Moore, 2019).

Nurse Informaticists and Other Healthcare Organizations

Nurse Informaticists have helped to streamline the flow of current information and education of healthcare providers in evidence-based practice. The expanding world of healthcare records being maintained electronically has created a more accurate method of record keeping as it is immediately available to all and can be constantly updated for accuracy. This became increasingly important with the Covid pandemic. The pandemic came on with little warning and created a tremendous shift in needs and priorities. Nurse informatics played an important role in increasing operational efficiency with the building of documentation that could be shared electronically. This allowed the sharing of information between healthcare organizations and the government agencies tracking the outbreak, getting information out to the public, providing information to allow screening of potentially infected patients, and steering them to the appropriate locations for screening and treatment. Within the organization, the constant update of information allowed for the allocation of beds, changing dietary orders allowed the kitchen to adjust, and sharing new treatment paradigms allowed pharmacy, purchasing, and materials distribution to prepare. The ID team was constantly sharing information on a daily or even hourly basis to provide the best evidence-based practice; all of this was done by working with the nursing staff to determine their needs and provide constant educational support, collaborating with the system builders in IT to adapt to changing needs in documentation by building intake questions that fit the new normal and allowed sharing information with other healthcare organizations. It helped to prevent unnecessary face-to-face exposure for the public. The nurse informaticists assisted in developing and expanding telehealth and remote working technologies while maintaining patient privacy per HIPPA regulations. This allowed organizations to provide care to patients in need while minimizing chaos. (Schoenbaum, 2020).

Impact of Full Nurse Engagement in Health Care Technology

The current world situation is complicated. There has been a nursing shortage going on for the past several years that has increased operating costs the hospitals and created unsafe staffing situations, which increases the risks of errors and incidents involving patient safety. There has been an unanticipated pandemic that has created havoc in the healthcare setting as well. Nursing informaticists have been working as the bridge within interdisciplinary healthcare teams and information systems and, more recently, have impacted the ability to anticipate needs in staffing and patient surges during the pandemic and assist in creating an organized flow of care. Nurse informaticists train nurses in utilizing information technologies to stay current on information, find healthcare information within the medical records and streamline documentation in a manner that makes it readily available to other members of the healthcare team.

“Health informatics has the power to aid healthcare systems to streamline processes and impact patient care delivery and financial outcomes. Systems must employ qualified nursing informatics personnel to ensure maximum return on investment. Real-time hospital operations dashboards. Using real-time solutions, predictive analytics, and engineered algorithms, this tool analyzes clinical data and transforms data into actionable items to help with decision management. Real-time data solutions analyze multiple data points (such as admissions, discharges, and transfers) to determine patient acuity and calculate needs based on real-time data(Courtney & Moore, 2019, p. 211).

Nurs-fpx 4040 Assessment 1 – Nursing Informatics in Health Care

Opportunities and Challenges

The challenge in introducing nursing informaticists to the healthcare system is that they are considered an unmeasurable value. They don’t obviously create income, although the use of electronic documentation, order writing, and efficient ongoing inventory control can save tremendous amounts of money. There is an opportunity to maintain an online resource, prompting all healthcare providers to open and consider all updates to the evidence-based practice continuum. The ability to stay current and have immediate access to health information, test results, symptoms, and treatments from their own homes is important for patients; It may improve compliance and empower active management of their own care(Lu et al., 2018).

Nurs-fpx 4040 Assessment 1 – Nursing Informatics in Health Care

Summary

The healthcare organizations of today must consider the many advantages of employing nurse informaticists: The importance of maintaining current evidence-based practice through continuously updating your database. The collaboration between nurses and other members of the healthcare team to identify areas open to improvement and to evaluate the effect through ongoing data collection. The ability to anticipate staffing needs to avoid unsafe situations as well as avoid overtime costs. The unmeasurable benefit of staff’s perceived ability to be heard, job satisfaction, and ultimate retention. And, most importantly, the ability to provide excellent care at all times. The question should be whether any healthcare organization can afford not to employ a professional nurse informaticist.

References

Association, A. N. (2018). Nursing informatics: Scope and standards of practice (2nd ed.).American Nurses Association.

Blažun Vošner, H., Carter-Templeton, H., Završnik, J., & Kokol, P. (2020). Nursing informatics. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 38(7), 331–337. https://doi.org/10.1097/cin.0000000000000624

Courtney, L., & Moore, J. (2019). Informatics and the floor nurse. In Fast Facts in health informatics for Nurses. Springer Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1891/9780826142269.0008

Lloyd, J., & Ferguson, S. (2017). Innovative Information Technology Solutions: Addressing Current and Emerging Nurse Shortages and Staffing Challenges Worldwide. Nursing Economics, 35(4), 211–212. Retrieved May 29, 2021, from

Lu, X., Zhang, R., Wu, W., Shang, X., & Liu, M. (2018). Relationship between Internet health information and patient compliance based on trust: Empirical study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 20(8), e253. https://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.9364

Sadasivaiah, S., Shaffer, E., Enanoria, W., Su, G., Goldman, S., Scarafia, J., Lee, T., Yu, A., Goldman, L., & Ratanawongsa, N. (2021). Informatics response to address the covid-19 pandemic in a safety net healthcare system. JAMIA Open. https://doi.org/10.1093/jamiaopen/ooaa057

Schoenbaum, A. E. (2020). Nursing Informatics Key Role in Defining Clinical Workflow, Increasing Efficiency and Improving Quality. HIMSS, 9.

The impact of health informatics on nursing practice. (2020, July). The university of Illinois Chicago. Retrieved May 29, 2021, from https://healthinformatics.uic.edu/blog/the-impact-of- health-informatics-on-nursing-practice/

ORDER A PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER HERE

We’ll write everything from scratch

Write a 4-5 page evidence-based proposal to support the need for a nurse informaticist in an organization.