NURS-FPX4040 Assessment 1 Nursing Informatics in Health Care SOLVED Example 2

McGonigle and Mastrian (2021) defined nursing informatics as the nursing subspecialty that enables nurses to master data, information, know-how, and wisdom through subspecialties that combine nursing science with information and computer science (p.56). Information technology has changed nursing care and transformed healthcare practice by assisting care delivery, supplementing decision-making, and predicting future trends in care using data. The used potential of technology to improve patient safety and quality of care is enormous (Schoenbaum & Carroll, 2020). 

However, technology keeps advancing and better methods are incorporated into practice. However, these technologies still require human interaction and human input to influence patient care. This proposal describes the role of a nurse informaticist, especially in an interdisciplinary team, explains the impact of full nurse engagement in technology, and finally suggests opportunities and predicts challenges that including a nurse informaticist in an interdisciplinary team creates.

Nursing Informatics and the Nurse Informaticist

Recent developments in healthcare, including the COVID-19 pandemic, opened our eyes to the need to harness the potential of technology in making healthcare efficient and meeting the needs of many patients remotely. Before this, the National League for Nursing, through their new vision, had urged nursing education programs to teach and prepare them for practice in the era of healthcare technologies (McBride & Tietze, 2022). However, the workload from clinician care needs and care efficiency needs can overwhelm the individual nurses, thus the need for interdisciplinary collaboration. 

Nurse informaticists are specialists trained with scientific and artistic knowledge and skills in utilizing data science to influence care through communication, decision-making, and daily monitoring workflow in healthcare systems. Their role is crucial in an interdisciplinary team approach to care because they enable the interdisciplinary teams to work efficiently. Nurse informaticists can influence policymaking and implementation, technical capacity, and patient outcomes.

Nurse informaticists have played an important role in the selection and implementation of appropriate technologies to meet patient care needs in various hospitals. Enhancing technology usability by matching user needs and vendor software features is another way nurse informaticists have ensured that organizations get worth for their expenditures on technologies and that patients have received safe care by using appropriate, safe, and high-yield technologies.

Nurse Informaticists and Other Health Care Organizations

Various institutions have implemented the informaticist role in the clinical and administrative care hierarchies. Nurse informaticists support other nurses, healthcare professionals, patients, and other stakeholders by enabling information structures, information processes, and information technologies.

According to (McBride & Tietze, 2022), nurse informaticists have improved patient safety and reduced care-associated costs (P.10). The achievements of these outcomes have been possible through safe medication administration systems using technology, predicting patient care changes through the prediction of patterns of previous outcomes, and easy documentation, retrieval and access of patient records.

Nursing Education for the Healthcare Informatics (NEHI) developed a model in 2013 through which nurse informaticists interact with other providers and care processes to achieve desired outcomes. According to the NEHI model, nurse informaticists influence public policy formation and the healthcare delivery environment by improving point-of-care technology, patient safety and care quality, and data management (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2021). Therefore, these nurses bridge the clinical and technological care delivery to meet efficiency and safety needs. Nurse informaticists in an interdisciplinary team initiate communication and champion communication technologies to facilitate team activities.