Informatics and Nursing Sensitive Quality Indicators
Nursing informatics is a specialty that integrates nursing and analytical and information sciences to communicate and manage data in nursing practice. It involves the application of information technology in nursing education, research, and nursing services (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2021). Therefore nurse informaticists are nurse practitioners who incorporate information technology in nursing service to improve the quality of healthcare services. The institutions need to use the nursing informaticists to benefit from their knowledge and expertise.
Furthermore, the employment of nursing informaticists can improve staff morale and patient outcome. Additionally, nursing informatics promotes collaboration across disciplines and professions. Besides, informatics will ensure a proper data storage system and easy follow-up of the patients.
Role of Nurse Informaticists
With the advancing technology in the world, there is a need to have healthcare providers who are experts in information technology, such as nurse informaticists. According to American Informatics Association, the roles of nurse informaticists include creating protocols for data retrieval and data presentation to promote patient-centered care. Secondly, nurse informaticists should do further studies on informatics to add new information and knowledge. Lastly, informaticists should actively promote health facility infrastructure by developing standards for communication and even advocating for evidence-based practice in the service provision (Wu et al., 2019).
Additionally, nurse informaticists should also be responsible for data validation using variety, volume, and velocity to promote a data-dependent decision-making process in the nursing practice (Garcia, 2021). The informaticists should also be in charge of implementing the new technologies in the health facility by motivating and inspiring other healthcare providers to adopt the use of technology in clinical practice. From the above-described roles, it is apparent that the healthcare industry should promote nursing informatics expertise. This can be done by encouraging nurses to advance their studies in nursing informatics.
Nurse Informaticists and Other Health Organizations
There are several health organizations and institutions with nurse informaticists. Nurse informatics specialists can identify measures promoting transformation since they can identify existing gaps in healthcare. An example of a healthcare organization with nurse informaticists is the John Peter Smith Hospital located in Texas. The facility assists in recognizing red flags for domestic violence and human trafficking through the application of Mobile Health and Electronic Medical records in monitoring patients’ progress (Azoui et al., 2021). This method has greatly improved the nurses’ workflow and has also provided the nurse practitioners with guidelines and measures for problem-solving.
Another organization of note is the Texas Hospital. The hospital has nurse informaticists who leverage technology to validate and evaluate the clinicians’ works through Electronic Medical Records. For this reason, the hospital has experienced a reduction in the workload from using handwritten documentation to using electronic health records. The nurses in the hospital have also positively influenced the predictive model through the integration of technology and analytical strategies in clinical practice. This technique has led to significant improvement in identifying patients who require palliation and those at high risk of mortality, hence reducing mortality rates.
Interaction Between Nurse Informaticists and other Professional Team Members
The nurse informaticists interact with the other nursing staff and the interdisciplinary team in several ways. For example, the nurse informaticists in Texas Hospital and John Peter Smith Hospital interact with staff from different disciplines by planning joint meeting sessions to equip them with technology concepts to improve healthcare outcomes. The interdisciplinary team was enlightened on the use and advantages of adopting Electronic Medical records and Mobile Health (mHealth) (Azoui et al., 2021). Furthermore, the patients were also trained on using the tools to ease sharing and storage of data.
Impact of Nurse Engagement in Health Care Technology
The engagement of nurses in the implementation of technology tools such as the electronic medical record and mobile health has contributed a lot in improving healthcare service provision and patient outcomes. According to (Azoui et al., 2021)), the use of mHealth has assisted in patient motivation, engagement, and behavior change. For example, healthcare workers use mHealth in monitoring patient health progress through Electronic Medical Records.
In addition, the tools also enable the healthcare workers to be among themselves and with the patients. Throughout their practice, the nurse informaticists must ensure that the patients’ data recorded is per HIPAA privacy policies because the mHealth and Electronic Medical Record store confidential information about the patients. Engagement of the nurses in healthcare technology has also decreased costs of workflow.
Challenges and Opportunities
The roles of the nurse informaticists and their interaction with the interdisciplinary team have both opportunities and challenges. With nurse informaticists, the health information has been easily accessible because the nurses participate in promoting healthcare technology adoption (Garcia, 2021)). For this reason, the workflow will be enhanced, making it easy to minimize errors while dealing with complex duties. With information technology, the nurses and other medical practitioners will be able to carry out services such as drug prescription, booking of patients, and patient monitoring by using the mHealth and Electronic Medical Record tools.
On the other hand, the challenges facing nursing informatics include difficulty in adopting technology changes but the older nurses. The older nurses during their training were not exposed to technology, and they, therefore, do not know the importance of using technology in health service provision (Luo, 2019). The other challenge is the violation of the HIPAA privacy policies by the interdisciplinary team during the early phase of technology adoption. Additionally, the multidisciplinary team can also be influenced when an external party leaks information due to illegitimate applications.
Recommendations
This proposal has highlighted the importance of having nurse informaticists, especially for the organization that plans to adopt the healthcare technology tool to provide healthcare service. Both Texas and John Peter Smith Hospital have adopted two technology tools, the mHealth and Electronic Medical Records. Embracing technology in healthcare will enable smooth interaction between healthcare providers and patients by virtually linking up the facility services.
Based on this proposal, the following are the recommendations I would propose: First, I would advise the nurse managers and leaders to encourage the adoption and implementation of new technologies. Secondly, I would propose that the nurse administrators organize regular conferences and training to educate and train the nurses on the implementation of the latest technologies and their advantages. I would advise the new nurses to be introduced to user-friendly technology tools to support their morale in technology adoption. Lastly, I would recommend that the nurse leader organize mentorship programs that will help change the nurses’ perception of the new technologies.
References
Azoui, A., Abdelouhab, K. A., & Idoughi, D. (2021, November). Design and Implementation of Cloud-Based M-Health Application for an Electronic Medical Record System. In International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Renewable Energetic Systems (pp. 458-467). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92038-8_46
Garcia-Dia, M. J. (2021). Nursing informatics: An evolving specialty. Nursing Management, 52(5), 56. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.NUMA.0000743444.08164.b4
Luo, S. (2019). Special focus issue on nursing informatics: Challenges of utilizing electronic health records. International Journal Of Nursing Sciences, 6(1), 125. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.ijnss.2018.11.001
McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. (2021). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge. Jones & Bartlett Publishers. 128422046X, 9781284220469
Wu, D. T., Chen, A. T., Manning, J. D., Levy-Fix, G., Backonja, U., Borland, D., Caban, J. J., Dowding, D. W., Hochheiser, H., Kagan, V., Kandaswamy, S., Kumar, M., Nunez, A., Pan, E. & Gotz, D. (2019). Evaluating visual analytics for health informatics applications: a systematic review from the American Medical Informatics Association Visual Analytics Working Group Task Force on Evaluation. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 26(4), 314-323. https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocy190