NURSING INFORMATICS

Nursing Informatics



Nursing Informatics

Introduction

Nursing informatics is a field within the field of health informatics, where people who have a nursing degree are involved in the implementation of a computer application in a hospital, nursing home, doctor's office, public health clinics, or other healthcare setting.

Two Computerized Systems

Electronic Health Record (EHR)

Health Information Network

Description and Analysis

Nursing informatics has evolved into an integral part of health care delivery and a differentiating factor in the selection, implementation, and evaluation of health IT that supports safe, high-quality, patient-centric care. New nursing informatics workforce data reveal changing dynamics in clinical experience, job responsibilities, applications, barriers to success, information, and compensation and benefits.

Computerized Systems Help in Achieving Quality Care

Two significant challenges have always faced nursing: (a) how to differentiate nursing's contributions to patient care from those of medicine; and (b) how to incorporate descriptions of nursing care into the health record in a manner that is commensurate with its importance to patients' welfare. As the development of the Electronic Health Record (EHR), and the Nationwide Health Information Network, for which the EHR is foundational, proceed at an ever-increasing pace, these challenges become even more important. We need to identify nursing's contribution to patient care and determine the best way to incorporate elements of nursing care into the EHR. Fortunately, the answer is already at hand; it lies in the use of standardized nursing terminologies (SNTs). Capturing nursing's independent contributions requires the use of standardized terminologies that reflect the uniqueness of nursing care. A key element in differentiating between the purposes and practices of nursing and medicine lies in the professional languages that are used and understood within and between these disciplines (Gardner, 2009).

The benefits of using standardized nursing terminologies include: (a) better communication among nurse and other healthcare providers, (b) increased visibility of nursing interventions, (c) improved patient care, (d) enhanced data collection to evaluate nursing care outcomes, (e) greater adherence to standards of care, and (f) facilitation of assessment of nursing competency.

Why the systems implementation is important?

Electronic health record and Health Information Network are the most important care support tools available in the world health care today. These tools work much better when the caregivers for an individual patient can connect electronically. The healthcare has created the Care Connectivity Consortium to pioneer the effective connectivity of electronic patient information in an approach that protects patient confidentiality.

The goal of the consortium is to demonstrate better and safer care with better data availability. If a patient from one system, gets sick far from home and must receive health care in another system, or if any system sends patients to another, doctors and nurses at each of the consortium systems will be able to access invaluable information about the patient's medications, allergies, and health conditions easily, and allowing them to provide the right kind of treatment at the right time and avoid unintended consequences like adverse medication interactions.

However, with all of these innovations and technologies, there is a big issue regarding the security of ...