Nursing Informatics



Nursing Informatics

Introduction

According to the American Nurses Association, Nursing Informatics is a "scientific discipline", which serves the profession of nursing and support supporting information management worked by other nursing specialties. The management of information specifically related to medical care is sometimes called medical informatics. The type of information gathered depends on many factors including the type of institution, ranging from a small doctor's office to a large clinic to a full hospital and the nature and scope of the treatment provided (Alessi, 2007).

However, one can make some generalizations. For outpatients, the required information includes an extensive medical record for each patient, including records of medical tests and their results, prescriptions and their status, and so on. For hospital patients, there are also admissions records, an extensive list of itemized charges, and records that must be maintained for public health or other governmental purposes. Hospitals increasingly use customized, integrated hospital information systems (HIS) that integrate billing, medical records, and pharmacy.

Computerized Management Systems Increase Quality of Care

Throughout the history, we have seen many changes in our lives. Changes that have changed the way we act, think and interact, ultimately, these developments have transformed the way we live. One of the biggest changes has been precisely the computer, from birth, to its present development. The direct computerization of those activities which are uniquely medical - history-taking, examination, diagnosis and treatment - has proved an elusive goal, although one hotly pursued by doctors, engineers and scientists working in the discipline of medical informatics.

Computer techniques have scored some successes: patients are, for example, more willing to be honest about taboo areas, such as their drug or alcohol consumption, or their sexual proclivities, with a computer than face to face with a clinician; however, the practice of taking a history remains the cornerstone of clinical practice. Examination of the patient is unlikely to be supplanted by technological means in the foreseeable future; visual and tactile recognition systems are still in their infancy. Skilled interpretation of the results by machine rather than the human mind seems equally as remote (Alessi, Huang, Quinlan, 2007).

Although there have been successes in computer-supported diagnosis in some specialized areas, such as the diagnosis of abdominal pain, workable systems that could supplant the mind of the generalist are still the dream of the many developers pursuing this goal, rather than a reality available to doctors in their consulting rooms now.

In therapeutics, computerized prescribing systems still require the doctor to make decisions about treatment, but facilitate the process of writing, issuing, and recording the prescription. In so doing, the system can provide automated checks, warning if necessary about allergies, potential drug interactions, or dosing errors. The built-in safety that this process offers is enhanced by the superior legibility of the script that ensues, reducing the potential for error when the medicine is dispensed by the nurse or the pharmacist (American Nurses Association, 2001).

Success in these individual applications continues to drive development, although the process has its critics, who are not slow ...