Impact of Nursing Informatics on Practice
Impact of Nursing Informatics on Practice
In today's technology-driven, fast-paced world, health care professionals are faced daily with increasing amounts of information, technology, and data that require a wide-range of skills. In an effort to cope with these increasing demands, information management technologies are being employed to improve access to a larger volume of information and to enhance the flow of information. These technologies have changed the way nurses receive, send, and apply information on medications, procedures, medical knowledge, patient data, and interventions.
For this Discussion, review the Learning Resources presented this week and consider your nursing career. Have you seen any events, actions, or other phenomena you would classify as nursing informatics? If you have not experienced a nursing informatics phenomenon, imagine such an experience and, then, answer the following questions:
• Briefly describe one of these phenomena.
• Would you say that the impact of this nursing informatics phenomenon has been mostly positive or mostly negative on practicing nurses, health consumers, or the nursing profession (select one group)? Why?
Be sure to include citations from your primary source articles in your Discussion, and provide the APA reference at the bottom of your response. Support your ideas or those of others with references from the professional nursing literature.
Impact of Nursing Informatics on Practice
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One of the major challenges facing nursing as a profession is its inability to stand alone. Nurses must work with other healthcare professionals to give care to any hospitalized patient. I have observed that a patient may be attended by up-to five healthcare providers in a day. A patient may be handled by different nurses between their shifts, therapists, physicians, and pharmacists. These phenomena make communication and coordination of patients a complex task. As the patient is handled in different medical environment, there are chances of medical errors or compromise of quality service, Marge Benham-Hutchins (2009). This situation calls for improvement in accessibility and flow of patient information. Recent development entrust this role to nursing informatics.
According to Lunderberg (2001), nursing informatics is the use of computer technology to organize structured medical data to provide information that supports nursing practice. Nursing informatics, according to Lunderberg creates uniformity in the language used to do document clinical data. Clinical data is organized to give nursing outcome that is easy to manage and process. Data recorded in nursing informatics is easy to compare and analyze. Furthermore, it enhances treatment efficiency and minimizes on costs and time used to treat a patient.
The HIMSS Nursing Informatics Awareness Task Force (2007) identified the transformation that nursing informatics has brought in healthcare. According to the task force, increased attention to patient safety and outcomes has been enhanced by use of nursing informatics. Today, it is way easy to explore further information in patient care. Nurses have a mandate of managing patient data. The importance of computerized clinical care has been reiterated in nursing schools through incorporation of nursing informatics in the nursing program. Baccalaureate nurses are required to possess excellent information technology skills that can be used in their daily practice. However, a self-evaluation of information technology competencies conducted by Fetter reveals that graduating nurses still lack important skills i...