Like in other sectors, technology has become an essential element in healthcare. Technology has facilitated the development of a wide range of systems to increase efficiency and effectiveness in serving different patients population. This transformation has caused a rise in demand for nursing informatics. According to the American Nurses Association (ANA), nursing informatics is “the speciality that integrates nursing science with multiple information and analytical sciences to identify, define, manage and communicate data, information, knowledge, and wisdom in nursing practice” (King et al., 2020). Thus, nurses apply a wide range of engineering principles and information in nursing informatics to increase efficiency and effectiveness in clinical practices. Unlike other healthcare informatics that focus on the quality of healthcare administration, nursing informatics aims to improve care quality. The nurses with the knowledge and skills to utilize nursing informatics are called nurse informaticists. Following the importance of nurse informaticists in the healthcare system, this paper proposes to the management to identify the essential consideration when hiring a nurse informaticist.
Nurse informaticists play a significant role in improving the quality of care through technology. One function of nurse informaticists is to help healthcare providers to acquire and utilize effective technologies that can enhance the quality of care. In this case, these specialists ensure that the healthcare management understands the basic properties of the technologies they need to ensure patient safety. The specialists are also responsible for developing quality inter-professional collaborations in the hospital to enable the effective adoption of different technologies (American Nursing Informatics Association, 2018). Thus, the nurse informaticist helps the staff understand how to use the technological systems and allows them to give feedback to the IT teams. Nurse informatics specialists also have a role in utilizing technological knowledge and advanced analytical skills to identify projects that effectively increase the effectiveness of care performance. Hence, it is essential for healthcare system management to establish the nurse informaticist role to improve staff and patient satisfaction through technology use.
Nurse Informaticists and Other Health Care Organizations
Nurse informaticists have a positive impact on the experiences of healthcare organizations. For instance, the specialists improve the staff’s preparedness and confidence in using nursing informatics. King et al. (2020) recommend the position of a nurse informaticist in every healthcare system since they improve other staff’s technology literacy and also facilitate the development of more user-friendly systems. A study by Nahm et al. (2019) also showed that nursing informatics innovations improved the use of EHR and also ensured effective end- users engagement. The nurse informatics programs also encourage the healthcare facilities’ leaders to adopt the nurse informatics role. Nursing informatics also helps improve the facility’s financial stability. Cost-benefit analysis concerning the adoption of nurse informatics shows that creating a nurse informaticist role benefits the facility’s sustainability. A study by Byrne (2021) on the challenges of adopting the nurse informaticist role showed that most healthcare owners needed to be more confident about their high salary demand ($79720- $35.49 hourly). However, the study showed that the role would create greater benefits by improving efficacy and efficiency in patients’ care, which ultimately lowered healthcare costs.
There is also a wide opportunity where nurse informaticists can interact with other nursing professionals and interdisciplinary teams. The interaction between the nurse informaticists and other multidisciplinary teams is important since they facilitate the improvement of patient outcomes through healthcare technologies. In most cases, the teams interact in scheduled meetings to search for solutions to critical caring issues. In such opportunities, the nurse informaticist provides guidance on how caring issues can be solved with healthcare technologies (Carroll, 2019). The nurse informaticists also assume leadership roles whereby they create an atmosphere that promotes respect among healthcare staff, such that they can ask questions on how to utilize nursing informatics. For example, the EHR users may raise to the specialists the issues they have encountered when using it, thus receiving sufficient education on improving the system’s benefits to the clinical staff.
Impact of Full Nurse Engagement in Health Care Technology
Full nurse engagement in healthcare technology is essential since it allows maximum utilization of the technology in improving effectiveness and efficiency in nursing practices. Nursing informatics improves the quality of care by increasing accuracy in nursing practices (King et al., 2020). For instance, nurse informaticists help in collecting relevant data that helps in identifying the users’ needs. This process initiates the initial stage of planning and analyzing the required technology. The information collection stage is critical since it helps develop user-friendly healthcare solutions for use in different nursing systems, thus eliminating mistakes that may hinder the system’s effectiveness.
The nurse informaticist’s role is also essential since it facilitates the protection of patient data. Although healthcare technologies have the potential to protect patients’ data, nurse informaticists can also increase the system’s effectiveness in protecting patients’ safety. Nurse informaticists increases’ the healthcare systems’ effectiveness in implementing modern systems to improve patient data safety, security and confidentiality (American Nursing Informatics Association, 2018). The nurse informaticists also facilitate the effective collection of feedback from users to eliminate the gaps that may improve the safety of patients’ data. Thus, nurse informaticists serve as privacy officers by assessing the safety of patients’ data and also securing the healthcare organization’s devices. Byrne (2021) states that nurse informaticists help healthcare managers to access secured WiFi and also develop effective policies for managing nursing informatics.
Opportunities and Challenges
Following the massive transformation of the nursing role, there is a great opportunity of expanding the nursing informaticist role. One way of transforming the nurse informaticist role is to increase nurses’ education level. Most practising nurses need more technology literacy to improve care quality. Thus, it will be important to improve the nurses’ technology skills to meet the rising demand for care (Carroll, 2019). Nurse informaticist specialists also have an opportunity to transform practice-oriented education. The new nursing informaticist role specialist role provides adequate information on how healthcare professionals can utilize nursing informatics to build inter-professional collaborations to improve the quality of care (Nahm et al., 2019). Nevertheless, adopting the nursing informaticist’s role also encounters several challenges. One major barrier is insufficient development of the responsibilities of the nurse informaticist. King et al., 2020 note that roles of nursing informaticists need to be more clear for the effective distribution of duties in the team, thus creating room for conflicts. Besides, since the role is still young, nurse informaticists need help organizing duties.
Summary of Recommendations
In conclusion, adopting the nurse informaticist role will be important in our healthcare organization. The nurse informaticist role will enable the healthcare facility to gain maximally from nursing informatics to facilitate effective improvement of the quality of care. The role will also promote inter-professional collaborations to increase the effectiveness of improving the decision-making process. Besides, the role will also increase the hospital’s effectiveness in managing patient data. In this case, the nurse informaticist roles will facilitate the development of user-friendliness data management tools, thus eliminating errors that may reduce the quality of nursing practices.
References
American Nursing Informatics Association. (2019). Inclusion of interprofessional terminology standards in electronic health records. Web. https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/nursing-excellence/official-position-statements/id/Inclusion-of-Recognized-Terminologies-Supporting-Nursing-Practice-within-Electronic-Health-Records/
Byrne, M. D. (2021). Nursing Informatics Specialist: Role in the Perianesthesia Environment. Journal of PeriAnesthesia Nursing, 36(1), 90-92. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jopan.2020.02.012
Carroll, W. (2019). Nursing informaticists safeguarding the use of emerging technologies. Online J Nurs Inform, 23(3). https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Whende-Carroll/publication/338111439_Nursing_Informaticists_Safeguarding_the_Use_of_Emerging_Technologies/
King, B. D., Riemann, L. A., & Brant, J. M. (2020). Oncology Nurse Informaticists: An Evolving Role to Support Nursing Practice. Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing, 24(3), 324-327. https://doi.org/10.1188/20.cjon.324-327
Nahm, E. S., Poe, S., Lacey, D., Lardner, M., Van De Castle, B., & Powell, K. (2019). Cybersecurity Essentials for Nursing Informaticists. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 37(8), 389-393. https://doi. org/10.1097/CIN.0000000000000570
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