NURS 6051 THE IMPACT OF NURSING INFORMATICS ON PATIENT OUTCOMES AND PATIENT CARE EFFICIENCIES

 NURS 6051 THE IMPACT OF NURSING INFORMATICS ON PATIENT OUTCOMES AND PATIENT CARE EFFICIENCIES

Nursing Informatics (NI) is the specialty that integrates nursing science with information and analytical sciences to identify, define, manage, and communicate data, information, knowledge and wisdom in nursing practice. (Sipes, C. 2016). Nursing informatics has enhanced the current reality of providing direct patient care while beginning to transect the realities of live given to the current technological capabilities. (McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. 2022 PP 611).

The hospital I work in uses EPIC for their charting system.  During your new hire orientation whether you are a new nurse or just new to the organization, you get a whole day of epic training by the CIT department.  Our CIT department is made of registered nurses who specialized in nursing informatics.   They teach you in the ends and outs of the epic system and how to utilize the patient’s electronic chart.  

One strategy on how to improve interactions at my hospital would be to improve communication about new updates and programs that are launching. They often tend to wait until the last minute to provide new education on updates. For example, our hospital just recently went live with Glucomander.  As nurses we were showed the bare minimum and were left with a lot of questions.  It has gotten better once we started using it and got for familiar with it the program and how it works.

Nursing Informatics (NI) has evolved beyond the definition of data management defined early on by Staggers, Gassert, and Curran [1] but is still considered by many as the primary and only skill of a nursing informaticist. (Sipes, C. 2016).   Nursing informatics is going to keep evolving because technology keeps advancing , which will allow for improvement in patient care. For example, at my hospital they purchased rover phones, these allow you to pull up a patient’s chart, scan your medications, look at labs and new orders without having to have a computer.  Another example of Technology advances in eHealth and mHealth are changing the way that health care consumers and providers communicate, receive, and deliver care, and access health information. As electronic health records and smartphones have become ubiquitous in the United States, opportunities, and applications for the integration of eHealth and mHealth have increased. Chan, J. 2021). In addition to technology advances, the changing health care model is simultaneously adapting to and driving initiatives in digital health care. (Chan, J. 2021).  Since COVID telemedicine became popular. It also had an impact on healthcare when it came to billing, and patient experiences. (McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. 2022 PP 618).