Nurses have been operating in the field of informatics within the last four decades. However, the adoption of this technology is received with suspicions calling for a need for informative reports to educate healthcare organizations on the importance of nurse informatics in improving patient healthcare. Nursing informatics has enhanced the healthcare system through areas such as data recovery, ethics, and patient care, among other functions in a healthcare organization.
Nursing Informatics and the Nurse Informaticist
Nursing informatics is the application of information technology in different nursing practices, such as education management and nursing duties to enhance healthcare delivery services (Darvish, Bahramnezhad, Keyhanian, & Navidhamidi, 2014). This specialty incorporates the nursing science, various information, and analytical science that facilitate the nursing practices by identifying, defining, managing, communicating information, and wisdom in the nursing practices.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Nurse informatics plays a critical role in enhancing nursing practices. For instance, specialties in nursing informatics play a crucial role in implementing improved health records practices, designing and offering training to other nurses on enhanced health records, as well as serving as consultants and creating policies that help the mission and vision of the healthcare organization (Darvish et al., 2014). The implementation of these laws is witnessed in various healthcare settings, such as acute training, long term, and physician offices. The efficiency of these roles is witnessed through the assessment of the level of patient safety.
Nurse Informaticists and Other Health Care Organizations
Healthcare organizations that have employed nurse informatics have recorded a positive impact of such a position in patient outcomes. According to research conducted in 2015 regarding the effects of the informatics nurse survey, nurse informaticists have contributed to the enhancement of patient safety by improving the quality and efficiency in patient care delivery by other nurses (Bresnick, 2017). The nursing informatics professional with background information in nursing combines these skills to assist nurse informaticists in understanding the needs and the workflow in the clinic as well as educating the on information technology systems to implement health IT infrastructure. For example, 70% of the organizations that have applied nurse informatics reported having enhanced medical device integration programs to improve patient safety (Bresnick, 2017). Therefore, most of the healthcare institutions that have implemented the nursing informatics technology have played a critical role in enhancing nursing skills, thus benefiting patients with an increased level of safety.
The nurse informaticist interacts with the rest of the nurses and interdisciplinary team as healthcare providers and trainers. For instance, informatics nurses act as providers for training and learning based on the objective data that healthcare institutions seek to achieve (Collins et al., 2017). The adoption of nursing informatics facilitate interaction with healthcare staff members by charting through text, email, and instant message to communicate about patients. The nurse informaticists use this data in a way that they can apply data stored in computers to identify the healthcare issue and consult the best way to address the problem. Therefore, the interaction between nurse informaticists and health care staff is the importance of ensuring that there is information for ensuring that nurses have the skills and technology needed to enhance the treatment process. Achieving this goal requires clear communication strategies to provide consultation services. The healthcare department is ever-changing in an attempt to strengthen the treatment process. Nurse informatics, therefore, will play a critical role in selecting and testing new areas to enhance healthcare delivery services.
Impact of Full Nurse Engagement in Health Care Technology
The adoption of nursing informatics in all aspects of nursing will have a positive impact on patient care exercises. The effectiveness of this exercise will be witnessed through various elements, such as enhanced diagnosis and treatment delivery. For instance, everything from telemetry and blood pressure is informatics tools, thus creating an opportunity for providing patient safety. Nurses have various duties that they have to perform as a way of enhancing the treatment process. In effect, nurses will have access to the evidence-based treatment process to improve patient healthcare outcomes. Informatics provides equipment and technology applicable to minimizing errors and make it possible to engage the patients (Lee, 2014). Increased efficiency in delivering healthcare practices also ensures that people have an opportunity to enhance nurse access to patient healthcare records. Electronic healthcare records are designed in such that patient information is secure and accessible whenever a patient develops complications. However, the adoption of this technology should not compromise patient safety and confidentiality.
The positive impact of informatics in a healthcare organization is also witnessed through the enhancement of workflow and increasing productivity. The effectiveness of this approach is seen through the cost-benefit analysis that ensures that indicates that return on investment for adopting nursing informatics skills is high. For instance, 83% of informatics nurses believe that the adoption of this technology will optimize activities in the healthcare organization, thus increasing productivity (Reform, 2019). Nurses will spend little time by ensuring continuous workflow to enhance continuous production in the healthcare organization.
Challenges and opportunities for adopting Informatics Nursing
Challenges
Despite the positive benefits associated with the implementation of nursing informatics in a healthcare organization, several challenges have to be solved. For instance, the acquiring of hardware and software devices for the organization may be expensive. Additionally, the absence of required skills among nurses makes it a challenge for a healthcare organization to increase efficiency and rate of return by adopting nursing informatics (Darvish et al., 2014). There is also troubleshooting issues and access to the internet required in improving the healthcare process.
Opportunities
Despite these issues, the healthcare organization has an opportunity for allocating resources that can be applied in training to equip nurses with skills required to skills on the use of informatics. The location of the organization is in a position to enjoy the benefit of internet coverage in the area. The high income from the hospital operations and government support can be applied in acquiring the required hardware, software, and skills needed to enhance the functioning of the organization in obtaining nursing informatics.
Conclusion and Recommendation
The advantages of nursing informatics in a healthcare organization exceed the costs incurred in adopting this technology. Therefore, the challenges associated with incorporating nursing informatics can be enhanced through the following recommendations. For instance, it is recommendable for the healthcare organization to use educational programs to equip nurses with skills needed to promote healthcare the use of nursing informatics in the healthcare institution. Education programs will strengthen the knowledge of nurses at all levels to implement the organization in achieving organizational benefits. The costs of the training can be minimized by offering web-based digital training services (Darvish et al., 2014). This process will ensure that there is a reduction of charges that the healthcare organization can incur in implementing the training process.
References
Bresnick J., (2017). Nurse Informaticists Have “Direct Positive Impact” on Patient Care. Health Itanalytics. Retrtieved from: https://healthitanalytics.com/news/nurse-informaticists-have-direct-positive-impact-on-patient-care
Collins, S., Yen, P. Y., Phillips, A., & Kennedy, M. K. (2017). Nursing informatics competency assessment for the nurse leader: The Delphi study. JONA: The Journal of Nursing Administration, 47(4), 212-218.
Darvish, A., Bahramnezhad, F., Keyhanian, S., & Navidhamidi, M. (2014). The role of nursing informatics on promoting quality of health care and the need for appropriate education. Global journal of health science, 6(6), 11. doi: 10.5539/gjhs.v6n6p11
Lee, A. (2014). The role of informatics in nursing. Nursing Made Incredibly Easy, 12(4), 55.
Reform, E. (2019). Nursing Informatics: Big Data Applications to Inform Practice. Application of Nursing Informatics: Competencies, Skills, and Decision-Making, 167.
