The nursing sector has developed a standard terminology that should be used to communicate all the nursing messages. This mode of communication has both advantages and disadvantages. The following are some of the advantages. First, having a common terminology can facilitate communication between nurses from different language backgrounds. For instance, nurses from India can communicate with the ones in China using a common terminology model, and this can be used to break the communication barrier between healthcare providers.
Another advantage is that it can make it easy for all medical professionals to determine the right medication for the patient. McGonigle and Mastrian (2017) argue that patient outcomes can be improved when every medical officer can read and understand his or her diagnosis and take action based on shared data. The last advantage of common terminology is that it can improve communication between nurses and other professionals, such as pharmacists.
On the other hand, the following are the disadvantages of common terminology in nursing. First, the model has brought confusion between nurses from different regions. Collins, Yen, Phillips and Kennedy (2017) argue that confusion has been experienced because not all nurses across the globe are often included when developing the terms. Another disadvantage is that it limits conversation between nurses on how best to help their patients. This form of communication is formal, but nurses connect more when they are in informal communication.
A single agreed model of terminology use can make it easy for nurses and other medical professionals to share health information, skills, or knowledge regardless of their practicum or language differences. Cummings et al. (2016) argue that a single agreed model of terminology can improve message transfer and sharing because it provides a common communication ground.
Hospital C is looking to implement an EHR. It has been suggested that a NIS be hired. This position does not involve direct patient care and the administration is struggling with how to justify the position. How can this position be justified?
Similar to other nursing specialties or roles, such as surgical, pediatric, triage, family care, or many other responsibilities, informatics plays a vital role in the healthcare field and should be treated as such. Nurses in the informatics unit do not impact patients directly. However, the facility cannot survive without their input. Thus, other care staff should not think the nurse informatics has no role to play in patient care. The following are some of the roles of nurse informatics, which can be used to justify their posts.
First, nurse informaticists are responsible for designing information systems that can be used to improve the quality of care. One of the systems that have been designed and developed by the help of nurse informaticist is electronic health records (EHRs). Collins et al. (2017) note that the informaticist must be included in such projects because they have the ability to include what nurses and patients need in the design.
Together with IT experts, nurse informaticists ensure that all healthcare systems, such as EHRs and other telehealth, are operating smoothly without hitches. In other words, they are responsible for maintaining the systems and updating the ones that need security updates. Another vital role of informatics is to manipulate healthcare data so that ordinary nurses and understand and interpret it (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017).