Nursing Informatics: A New Field Of Nursing

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Nursing is a field that has several diverse options. These options include, bedside nursing, administration, education, case management, forensics, and numerous other possibilities. A new field of nursing has emerged, nursing informatics. Nursing informatics (NI) is defined by the American Nurses Association (2008) as a specialty that “integrates nursing science, computer science, and information science to manage and communicate data, information, knowledge, and wisdom in nursing practice.” Simply defined, nurses are using the combination of technology and nursing knowledge to care for patients and improving outcomes. Nurses are doing this by collecting data, converting that into information, and then into knowledge, where it then can be applied to their critical thinking skills to better care for their patient (Finkalman & Kenner, 2013) …show more content…

One way that effects patient care is when the interdisciplinary team has no access to the patients’ charts during that allotted time. In that case, the nurse reverts back to paper charting with flowsheets and checklists, until the system is back up and running. This can be very frustrating and difficult for the new nurses who haven’t ever worked with paper charting, but it is a challenge that can be easily conquered.
Nurses are fundamental to the process of implementation of certain systems used in the workplace. Nurses should be allowed to have input and suggestions regarding what works and what doesn’t when it comes to those systems, whether it is the EMR, healthcare organization systems, or even the use of point of care systems (Mitchell, 2011). This allows for open collaboration between the nurses and information technology to come up with solutions and user friendly applications when needed. The technology world is ever changing and with that comes new ways to monitor and take care of our patients.
Informatics: Future

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