This paper is based on the information obtained from an informatics assistant at a community health centre during an interview. The paper extensively outlines the facts surrounding informatics and the role that it plays in the health sector to both the health institutions and the patients. Furthermore, the work gives a review on the research conducted with the objective of finding out impacts of the agency for healthcare research and quality patient safety indicators in the clinical section.
According to the interview, informatics involves the studying and applying of information technology at professional, arts and science level especially in the health sector. Moreover, information from the respondent indicated that not every personnel in the nursing section of the clinic setting could be regarded as informatics personnel but only those who had specialized in informatics. Therefore, nurses with specialization in the informatics sector have the knowledge and ability to connect their skills in health science with technological information to assist the health care provider store, utilize and retrieve huge amounts of data, which is vital for patient care. Additionally, for one to qualify to play a role in the health informatics sector, the involved personnel must attain some specific qualifications. Such qualifications include; level two Certificate in Health Informatics, which equips the learner with the knowledge to deal with paper and electronic data within a clinical setting. Also, a Level 3 Diploma in Health Informatics which provides competency to underpin the skills of those seeking to continue with CF4 Level Assistant Practitioner role on the Health Informatics Career Framework, this plays a primary role in learner preparation for proceeding with practitioner roles.
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The interview also gave an insight into the importance of informatics to the clinical section and the patients at large. To begin with, the primary role that informatics play on the health sector is that it provides the nursing experts with knowledge about computer science and information science, which enhances their communication and management of data in nursing practices. For instance, informatics skills enable the healthcare system to maintain security and the patient’s privacy inters of transforming data into the preferred outcome. In addition, informatics has assisted in the prior identification of patients’ problems. For example, there is increased ease of availability of patients’ information due to the improved identification of the patients’ status by the use of electronic documentation which enables the clinical experts to interpreted, systemize, and quickly arrange information regarding the status of the patients. Additionally, the respondent admitted that the knowledge of informatics had significantly enhanced cost saving and achievement of productivity goals by the clinicians. The knowledge has also played a substantial role in promoting and facilitating access to resources and references. The application of informatics has backed up the healthcare mission to develop high quality and evidence-based care. More so, it has enhanced relationship between the providers and the care recipients as well as influencing the change management in the healthcare facilities.
The personnel with the role of informatics in the clinical sector face various challenges and human factors despite them delivering many benefits to the health institutions. The nurse informatics mainly face the problem involving lack of administration support, which arises from professionals of informatics not being provided with professional and emotional support. Moreover, the personnel is hindered from delivering their best level of skills due to lack of staffing resources, lack of financial resources such as limited capital for purchasing the required technological equipment, and deficient organizational strategic planning. Likewise, the people in the role of informatics widely encounter difficulties when delivering services that involve the use of advanced technological resources with complicated designs. For example, the use complicated software to analyze and retrieve the patients’ data.
The interview has enabled me to understand the impact of informatics in the healthcare by influencing me with the knowledge about the roles of informaticists. The understanding has deeply increased my urge to achieve the goal of accompanying my nursing degree with informatics. Furthermore, the world is undergoing a rapid transformation from most manual systems to modern technological advancement in the health sector. Therefore, informatics qualification will enable me to gain competency and be conversant with the ways of improving patients’ care by the use of informatics facilities.
Different research that has been conducted both recently and in the past times indicate that clinical informatics has greatly influenced the Agency for Healthcare Research and the efforts to Improve Patient Safety. For instance, the Institute of Medicine researched in 1998 and issued a report concerning medical errors, which approximated that about ninety-eight thousand people die in United States because of medical errors and further released a corresponding report in the year 2001(Øvretveit, 2007). The contents of the report led to the conclusion that U.S healthcare system is not capable of providing consistently high-quality care because of majorly being outmoded. Moreover, The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has funded and investigated patient safety in the past thirty as well as supporting many earlier works on medical errors, such as that of Lucian Leape and David Bates (Owen et al., 2010). In addition, in the final steps of the struggle to improve healthcare quality, reduction of medical errors was considered as the topmost priority. Proceeding research indicated that medical errors occur because of the human nature of being fallible information processors, and occur due to faulty system designs that provide room for errors to occur. Therefore, the patient safety is highly guaranteed when computerized decision support systems are used thus rendering nursing informatics as necessary for patients’ safety in our present clinical systems.
Informatics Guiding Education Reform has played a key role in the clinical system since its formation. The initiative has been able to beget together nursing stakeholders on their desire to advance a shared vision, specified actions, and strategies for enhancing the practices of nursing (Brettlecker, 2008). Additionally, the initiative is focused on using the informatics skills, theories, rules and practices to provide an opportunity to nurses to make the clinical section safer, patient-centered, efficient, further efficient and timely. In addition, a team referred to as the TIGER informatics Competencies Collaborative was formed to generate informatics recommendations for all the nurses undergoing practice and the graduating nursing students. The team extensively managed to review the literature and survey of informatics studies, research, and practices that have substantially been incorporated into the present clinical systems.
In conclusion, clinical informatics is a significant part of the healthcare system. It has been of great benefit to both the health care institutions and the patients. Therefore, each clinical setting should have an informatics section to advance the nursing practice for the better of the quality of healthcare that is provided to the patients.
References
Brettlecker, G., Cáceres, C., Fernández, A., Fröhlich, N., Kinnunen, A., Ossowski, S., and Vasirani, M. (2008). Technology in healthcare. CASCOM: Intelligent Service Coordination in the Semantic Web , 125-139.
Owens, D. K., Lohr, K. N., Atkins, D., Treadwell, J. R., Reston, J. T., Bass, E. B., ... & Helfand, M. (2010). AHRQ series paper 5: grading the strength of a body of evidence when comparing medical interventions—Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the Effective Health-Care Program. Journal of clinical epidemiology , 63 (5), 513-523.
Øvretveit, J., Scott, T., Rundall, T. G., Shortell, S. M., & Brommels, M. (2007). Improving quality through effective implementation of information technology in healthcare. International Journal for Quality in Health Care , 19 (5), 259-266.
