Nursing Informatics in Health Care

Nursing Informatics in Health Care

The modern healthcare landscape has revolutionized care operationalization, shifting care toward value-based approaches. Technology has played an integral role in this revolution. Healthcare technologies continue to redefine several components of healthcare provision. Accordingly, nursing informatics provides an avenue by which these technologies can seamlessly integrate into nursing practice. Nursing informatics is targeted at improving health at the lowest cost possible. This proposal details nursing informatics, the role of a nurse informaticist, and their impact on healthcare.

Nursing Informatics and the Nurse Informaticist

Nursing informatics is an emerging field in nursing that integrates nursing knowledge and technology to identify, communicate and manage health information. This specialty is targeted at optimizing healthcare outcomes while minimizing healthcare costs. Nurse informaticists are specialists in nursing informatics. Nurse informaticists advance healthcare by working as developers of healthcare communication and information technologies. Nurse informaticists also work as educators, researchers, software engineers, and policy developers (Kaihlanen et al., 2021). The American Medical Informatics Association outlines the core work areas of nurse informaticists. These areas include research methodologies to design and disseminate novel nursing knowledge, building interoperable data infrastructure and retrieving and presenting health information that supports patient-centred approaches.

Nurse Informaticists and Other Health Care Organizations

Several care organizations have continuously engaged nurse informaticists within their frameworks of care provision. The Southwest Hospital recently recruited nursing informaticians in their chronic care clinics. This recruitment came against the backdrop of complaints by healthcare providers over telehealth software used by the hospital to monitor patients under the home-based care continuum. These providers were having challenges integrating wearable technologies into the patient portals. Recruiting nursing informaticists into their operationalization framework ensured the resolution of this problem and enhanced the hospital’s efficiency in integrating these wearable technologies.

Interactions between the nurse informaticists recruited to the hospital and other multidisciplinary team members were initially slow. This was mainly due to role confusion between them and other ICT personnel in the hospital. However, this was curtailed by establishing a functional work structure that outlined the role of either. Healthcare providers were also informed of the presence of nurse informaticists and directed to channel their complaints to them. Currently, nurse informaticists and other caregivers within this hospital exist harmoniously. They are valued for their expertise in informatics and their role in resolving information and communication technology issues that ensue during care provision.

Impact of Full Nurse Engagement in Health Care Technology

Nurses play an integral role in patient management. Healthcare technologies allow nurses to improve their care processes, communication efficiency, and effectiveness. By fully engaging with these technologies, nurses can communicate effectively, thus minimizing medical and medication-related errors accustomed to communication gaps or deficiencies. It also positively impacts patient care by ensuring that the nursing interventions selected for the patients are optimal and effective in alleviating their suffering (Farokhzadian et al., 2020). Nurses should thus be allowed to engage fully with healthcare technologies.

Safeguarding patients’ protected health information (PHI) is a fundamental role of nurses and other caregivers. Nursing informaticists, as educators and healthcare information technologists, can provide training on hospital information technologies containing PHI to other interdisciplinary team members. This training should highlight privacy, security, and confidentiality safeguard measures on these technologies and provide a framework for identifying and resolving hospital information technology software issues that may result in data leaks (Kamerer & McDermott, 2020). These measures will ensure that PHI is safeguarded against unintended use or malicious use as provided by the HIPAA privacy rule.

Engaging nurses in healthcare technology may also positively impact workflow. Healthcare technologies have provisions for workflow automation that considerably lower the time taken for care processes. These technologies also improve communication between individual nurses and other caregivers. By automating nursing processes and improving communication between nurses, these technologies guarantee a smooth and fast nursing workflow within various hospital departments (Garcia-Dia, 2020). Nurses should, therefore, be fully engaged with healthcare technologies to improve their workflow.

Lastly, fully engaging nurses in healthcare technologies can considerably lower healthcare costs and ensure a return on investment. Healthcare technologies decrease costs by reducing healthcare administrative costs. Technologies like the EHR streamline administrative processes and eliminate time wastage during care transitions. These significantly result in the reductions of administrative costs that drive the costs of healthcare high. Healthcare technologies ensure the realization of return on investment by enhancing the quality of care. Information technologies such as EHR provide the selection of safe, effective, and efficient medical interventions that optimize care outcomes and improve patient experiences. Subsequently, this ensures the promotion of optimal return on investment.

Opportunities and Challenges

With technological advances in healthcare, opportunities for nurse informaticists continue to emerge. Nurses and other healthcare professionals within the interdisciplinary healthcare teams can learn about these technologies promptly from nurse informaticists to ensure seamless integration into care operationalizations. The addition of nurse informaticists may, however, present a few challenges to other members of the healthcare teams. These challenges include inadequate understanding of their roles by other team members, the rigidity of some team members to embrace their inclusion within these teams, and ineffective communication between them and other team members.

Interdisciplinary team members’ collaboration is pivotal in advancing care through technology. To effectively collaborate on this course, they must adequately understand these technologies. They must also play an active role in introducing and implementing these technologies into their framework of care provision. They must also demonstrate collaborative approaches and fundamentals of cooperation, role interdependence, and accountability to ensure that each member plays their role in promoting the use of these technologies.

Summary of Recommendations

Nursing informaticists play a critical role in healthcare. Their role is vital to informing continuous improvements on existing and emerging healthcare technologies. The hospital should consider recruiting nurse informaticists to bridge technological gaps in handling and implementing newer healthcare technologies in the hospital’s framework of care provision. Nurse informaticists are educators and researchers who play an integral role in educating other professionals on various healthcare technologies (Farokhzadian et al., 2020). In this regard, they can ensure seamless and safe use of new technologies within the hospital.

The hospital should also consider training staff members within the interdisciplinary healthcare teams on the fundamentals of team collaboration. They should also be told about nurse informaticists’ role in bridging technological gaps and information interpretation that may be apparent when utilizing some healthcare technologies. This will enable them to embrace their functionalities and provide them with a safe landing to the hospital structure of operationalization. The impact of nurse informaticists on workflow, patient safety, and safeguarding the integrity of patients’ protected information necessitates their presence within the care framework. Their inclusion in the interdisciplinary healthcare teams is therefore warranted.

 References

Farokhzadian, J., Khajouei, R., Hasman, A., & Ahmadian, L. (2020). Nurses’ experiences and viewpoints about the benefits of adopting information technology in health care: a qualitative study in Iran. BMC Medical Informatics And Decision Making, 20(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12911-020-01260-5

Garcia-Dia, M. (2020). Balancing care with technology. Nursing Management, 51(4), 56-56. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.numa.0000657280.44223.10

Kaihlanen, A., Gluschkoff, K., Laukka, E., & Heponiemi, T. (2021). The information system stress, informatics competence and well-being of newly graduated and experienced nurses: a cross-sectional study. BMC Health Services Research, 21(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-021-07132-6

Kamerer, J., & McDermott, D. (2020). Cybersecurity: Nurses on the Front Line of Prevention and Education. Journal Of Nursing Regulation, 10(4), 48-53. https://doi.org/10.1016/s2155-8256(20)30014-4

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Write a 4-5 page evidence-based proposal to support the need for a nurse informaticist in an organization focusing on improving health care outcomes.

Introduction
As you prepare for this assessment, you are encouraged to complete the Team Perspectives of the Nurse Informaticist activity. Achieving this will help you succeed with the evaluation as you explore the nurse informaticist’s role from the different perspectives of the healthcare team. Completing activities is also a way to demonstrate engagement.

In all practice areas, nurses at the baccalaureate level are involved in nursing informatics through interaction with information management and patient care technologies. Nurses must demonstrate knowledge of and skills in health information and patient care technologies and how to use these tools at the bedside and organizational levels. Moreover, nurses must recognize how data gathered from various health information sources can impact national and state regulatory-level decisions.

Scenario
For this assessment, assume you are a nurse attending a meeting of your state’s nurses association. A nurse informaticist conducted a presentation on her role and its impact on positive patient and organizational outcomes in her workplace. You realize that your organization is undergoing many technological changes. You believe this type of role could provide many benefits to your organization.

You decide to pursue proposing a nurse informaticist role in your organization. You speak to your chief nursing officer (CNO) and human resources (HR) manager, who ask you to prepare a 4–5 page evidence-based proposal to support the new role. In this way, they can decide whether adding such a role could justify the return on investment (ROI). They need your proposal before an upcoming fiscal meeting.​ This is not an essay but a proposal to create a new Nurse Informaticist position.

A critical part of this assessment is the justification of the need for a nurse informaticist in a healthcare organization and references from relevant and timely scholarly or professional resources to support the rationale for creating this nurse informaticist position. The term justifies means to show or prove that the nurse informaticist position brings value to the organization. This justification must include evidence from the literature to support that this position will provide a return on investment for the organization.

Preparation
To successfully prepare for this assessment, you will need to complete these preparatory activities:

Review assessment resources and activities.
Conduct independent research on the nursing knowledge and skills necessary to interact with health information and patient care technology.
Focus your research on current resources available through peer-reviewed articles, professional websites, government websites, professional blogs, wikis, job boards, etc.
Consult the BSN Program Library Research Guide to help identify scholarly and authoritative sources.
Interview peers in your network who are considered information technology experts.
Ask them how information technology advances impact patient care at the bedside, at the organizational level, and beyond.
Proposal Format
The chief nursing officer (CNO) and human resources (HR) manager have asked you to include the following headings in your proposal and to be sure to address the bullets following each heading:

Nursing Informatics and the Nurse Informaticist
What is nursing informatics?
What is the role of the nurse informaticist?
Nurse Informaticists and Other Health Care Organizations
What is the experience of other healthcare organizations with nurse informaticists?
How do these nurse informaticists interact with the rest of the nursing staff and the interdisciplinary team?
IMPACT OF FULL NURSE ENGAGEMENT IN HEALTH CARE TECHNOLOGY
How does fully engaging nurses in health care technology impact:
Patient care?
Protected health information (security, privacy, and confidentiality)?
In this section, you will explain evidence-based strategies that the nurse informaticist and interdisciplinary team can use to manage patients’ protected health information effectively, particularly privacy, security, and confidentiality. Evidence-based means that they are supported by evidence from scholarly sources.
Workflow?
Costs and return on investment?
Opportunities and Challenges
What are the opportunities and challenges for nurses and the interdisciplinary team with the addition of a nurse informaticist role?
How can the interdisciplinary team collaborate to improve quality care outcomes through technology?
Summary of Recommendations
What are 3 to 4 key takeaways from your proposal about the recommended nurse informaticist role that you want the CNO and the HR manager to remember?
This is the section where the justification for implementing the nursing informaticist role is addressed. Remember to include evidence from the literature to support your recommendation.