Advancing Technology and the Nurse's Role

Informatics is the science of processing data (Collins English Dictionary). Nursing informatics is defined by the American Nursing Association as “a specialty that integrates nursing science, computer science, and information science to manage and communicate data, information, knowledge, and wisdom in nursing practice” (ANA, 2008). Technology in the workplace has become one of the most talked about trends in nursing from the mid 1990’s to now as the technology nurses see on the unit and in the community rapidly changes and grows even daily. Various technologies encompassing nursing informatics are computer-based schedule system to assign staff; patient safety tracking; helping patients use a device to partake in a research project; handheld computer for educating patients; using online learning in nursing education; use of a hospital information system; finding and using research on an online network. Technology has evolved with the nursing practice from hand written charting in a patients chart to tick charting on a computer system; nursing documentation has evolved along with how nurses receive and retrieve current information from the patients.

Patient and nurse safety: How information technology makes a difference. Nursing Administration Quarterly, 29(1), 97-101. Retrieved April 22, 2007, from Health Module database. (Document ID: 815491751). Shannon Tan (18 October).

Maintaining an EHR could help tack data, identify patients who are due for preventative screenings and visits, monitor VS, & improve overall quality of care in a practice. Nurse informaticists play an important role in the adaptation, utilization, and functionality of an EHR. The impact the EHR could have on a general population is invaluable; therefore, it needs special attention from a trained professional. Annotated Bibliography Englebright, J., Aldrich, K., & Taylor, C., (2014) Defining and Incorporating Basic Nursing Care Actions Into the Electronic Health Record. Journal of Nursing Scholarship.

Conclusion The responsibility and the tasks of a nurse is remains to modify and have go through a lot of changes since the reform of the health care. Nurses are currently in the community delivering different role for care instead of delivering acute care. For the lifelong care of patients whom nurses are accountable for are easier due to the ACO>s assistance for nurses being more organized. Health clinics Medical Homes are delivering patients with the quality care during the time of illness under the supervision of Nurses.

Nursing Informatics is important to the nursing profession since nurses’ work in information-intensive environment. The advanced technology available in recent years allows nurses to collect data from patents, share the information with other nurses and healthcare providers to provide better care and knowledge that can be gather from the information. Information can be used in clinical care, teaching environments, billing and other environments, with regards to privacy policies. The advancement in technology is allowing nurses to spend more time caring for their patients rather that spending time documenting incidents. New devices and applications are allowing patents and other healthcare providers to provide better care by allowing them to

Luparell, S. (2011). Incivility in nursing: The connection between academia and clinical setting. Critical Care Nurse, 31(2), 92-95. Primomo, J. (2007).

After reviewing the research articles and discovering nosocomial CLABSIs are an issue in many areas of nursing care, it is evident nurses need further education on this matter. It would also be beneficial to establish a quality assurance change plan and establish set guidelines for staff to follow when inserting, and caring, for CLs. Continuing education is always an advantage in nursing. Keeping current with evidence-based practices and research, ensures nurses are up to date on the current literature allowing them to provide quality, safe patient care. The research conducted in these articles highlighted the fact that educating staff led to improved patient outcomes in relation to nosocomial CLABSIs.

Nursing informatics is continuously evolving field that began when computers were introduced into the healthcare field. Informatics practices support nurses as they seek to care for their patients efficiently and safely, by making the information that they need more readily available (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2015). Information technology and informatics is being incorporated into nursing school curriculum also the country, but the progression is slow. Staggers, Gassert, and Curran advocate that nursing students should be educated on nursing informatics competencies. Practicing nurses can be classified in four main categories the beginning nurse, experienced nurse, informatics nurse specialist and informatics innovator.

One of the biggest benefits is that the nurse no longer has to decipher the illegible handwriting of the physicians and make guesses that could harm the patient if they are incorrect. This system also includes alerts that notify the medical staff of potential safety issues, as well as provides an easy way to track orders, and the time they were ordered (Moniz, 2009). Another benefit of CPOE is that it promotes use of the five rights of drug administration: the right patient, the right drug, the right dose, the right route, and the right time which allows the nurse to focus on the patient’s assessment before and after drug administration to prevent adverse reactions. However, there are also many unexpected errors and challenges that have occurred from computerized provider order entry systems. When CPOE first began to come into play in the medical field, it created the challenge for the medical staff of letting go of the paper world, and trusting in the computer systems reliability.

Therefore, information technology issues help in ensuring that patients get appropriate health care and nurses work in favorable working conditions. The improvements made to information technology issues have contributed to the betterment of the profession, over the years. Therefore, nurses must embrace information technology and make use of future developments in nursing profession because they play an essential role in practice.