Nursing Informatics in Healthcare

Healthcare organizations always try to provide high-quality health and safety to patients and for this purpose, many new ideas, policies, strategies, and technologies were identified and implemented. The importance of information technology in all fields is increasing along with the changing trends in adopting advanced methodologies to deal with issues related to patient care and safety. Adoption of new technologies can be challenging for the staff members of a healthcare organization especially nurses because they are important components of improving health of the patients along with analyzing and managing their health records. Evolving trends in technologies make record-keeping more easy and sustainable not only for healthcare organizations but for all disciplines. 

Nursing Informatics and Its Role

The new trends in technology undermine the need for the training and education of nurses on computers and technology to manage and operate matters related to patient care and safety with efficiency and effectiveness. This merging of nursing science with computers and technology leads to the invention of the new term known as Nursing informatics (American Nurses Association, 2023). It refers to the involvement of technology by the nursing staff in nursing practices including patient data collection, record-keeping, and managing data for effective decision-making in the patient treatment process.

Role of Nurse Informaticist

Most hospitals and healthcare organizations are moving towards the emerging trends of technology for the betterment of patient health and safety along with high-quality patient outcomes. The most important concern about emerging technology is the education of the staff members according to the new trends so that they can be able to improve their practices regarding patient safety and health most effectively and efficiently. To fulfill the purpose of coping with technology a new strategy of nurse informaticists comes into existence that has the competency to deal with technology, computers, and science altogether for bringing effective patient outcomes. Nurse informaticists are responsible for doing research on recent trends and ensuring the feasibility of new technology implementation in a healthcare facility. Nurse informaticists play a critical role in managing patient data, assuring the use of data effectively keeping the privacy of the patients, and efficient use of patient data recording technologies (Backonja, et al., 2021).

Electronic Health and Medical Records

Nurse informaticists must be well aware of new technologies for data recording, maintaining, and organizing. Nowadays many hospitals are implementing the technology of electronic data storing systems based on two major categories health records and medical records. According to a source (HealthIT.gov) the electronic strategy of managing health records is adopted by 96% of United States hospitals. The importance of maintaining records electronically is identified through current trends being followed in most hospitals as the agenda of all healthcare organizations is to provide high-quality health and safety to all patients and for this purpose, every organization is following the technology trends due to their effectiveness and efficiency. 

Collaboration of Nurse Informaticists with Interdisciplinary Teams

Interdisciplinary teams refer to the collective membership of all the staff members from different disciplines to ensure the best level of care and health safety for the patients. These teams are gaining huge importance, especially in healthcare organizations because of their effectiveness and efficiency. Collaboration of interdisciplinary teams is always at the front end in improving the quality of the patient’s health and the well-being of the staff members. Nurse informaticists’ collaboration with interdisciplinary teams is beneficial in providing knowledge and information to the staff members regarding technologies, their implementation, and their effective usability. All the interdisciplinary teams together with nurse informaticists help the healthcare organization from many perspectives including medical, computer, information technology, and chemical (Zhou et al., 2021). Nursing informaticists can identify hurdles in the way of technology implementation and can provide detailed research and evidence on how to resolve problems however collaboration with interdisciplinary teams ensures the use of this information effectively and produces and develops electronic devices and technological instruments that are best suited for the patient’s health and safety (Kim, 2019).

Improving Quality of Patient Care through Collaboration

Nurse informaticists having expertise in both science and technology help other interdisciplinary teams to understand new concepts, practice new strategies, and develop new experiences of taking care of patients (Peltonen et al., 2023). Nurse informaticists help all the members of the interdisciplinary team in the identification of problems regarding health and safety, evidence and research-based solutions, implementation of the strategies to resolve the problem, and lastly evaluation of the technologies and strategies developed and applied to solve particular health issues. Managing and handling big data is always a matter of concern for healthcare organizations because in hospitals terabytes of patients’ data have been saved that need to be effectively organized, managed, monitored, and maintained for its efficient usability (Webb, 2021). In an effective collaboration with technologists and interdisciplinary teams regarding data handling, patient management, quality improvement, policy making, and information sharing, nurse informaticist plays a key role in ensuring the proper transformation of every important educational aspect that can help the organization in achieving desired quality-based patient outcomes.

Need of Nurse Informaticist in Healthcare Organizations

Emerging technology in a healthcare organization determines the most essential need of the staff that can be competent enough to understand the science and the technology for the better implementation of new technological strategies for high-quality patient safety and outcomes (Backonja et al., 2021). Nurse informaticists are the main models in ensuring patient health and safety by using their effective practices and extensive knowledge about science, computers, and technology collectively to generate outcomes that are sustainable and of high quality. Staff competency always plays a major and critical role in improving the quality standards of any organization most importantly they are always at the front end of patient treatment and stay by the side of the patients until they recover fully, therefore nurse informaticists are becoming an essential need of today’s time. The responsibilities of nurse informaticists in the building plan of technology related to health and the development of information technology appliances related to health are of major importance due to their wide experience and knowledge in different disciplines which is eventually the most important factor in improving quality standards in healthcare organizations (Delaney et al., 2022). 

New devices and technologies used in healthcare organizations like monitoring virtually, and artificially providing experiences and workshops, regarding patient handling, communication, and treatment involve a great knowledge of information technology along with the medical services and this can only be carved through staff that is competent to understand and apply both practices of science and technology together (Sensmeier & Anderson, 2021). In this era of technology, an organization can only be successful and achieve its goals if they are well well-updated with the emerging technologies of today’s time and this is the main reason that defines the purpose or reason for nurse informaticists in the healthcare sector.

Evidence-Based Strategies to Protect Patient Data and Health Information

Evidence-based strategies always focus on using experiences, opinions, and information collection processes to improve the quality of health and safety for the patients. Patient data needs an incredible security system that is based on authentication and authorization of the sources to access data. With the emerging technologies the data security of the patients has become a major concern for healthcare organizations. These technologies help in introducing safe and monitored systems for patients that can prevent cyberattacks and data hacking under the guidance of nurse informaticists and interdisciplinary teams. Data safety is a major technological concern and can be monitored and improved through the collective research and knowledge of nurse informaticists and interdisciplinary teams. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) by the US has given rules against unauthorized access to the data and information of patients thus ensuring the privacy of patient data and confidentiality by limiting access (Lord, 2020).

Patient Data Authentication and Authorization

Nurse informaticists and interdisciplinary teams by sharing data and information from different disciplines can invent new technologies and devices for the better monitoring and organizing of patient information and confidential data. They understand the system from a technical point of view which makes it easy for them to analyze the problem, present the solution, implement the solution, and evaluate the strategy applied for resolving the problem. Two-way authentication procedures need to be added to personal healthcare devices so that the verification process blocks an unauthorized user from accessing the information related to patient health and safety.

Conclusion

Nurse informatics is gaining importance due to the merging trends in healthcare technology and the competency of organizations in designing and implementing better technologies to achieve better patient safety outcomes. Nurse informaticists and interdisciplinary team collaboration make the agenda of health and safety for all easy to achieve for healthcare organizations (Peltonen et al., 2023). Their collaboration collectively involves gathering information from different disciplines, using that information in the design and development procedure of the new strategies, implementing those strategies with the help of technologists, and then evaluating the strategy. This effective collaboration improves the quality of health provided to the patients and ensures great communication skills of the staff and effective performance in handling emergencies.

References

American Nurses Association. (2023). What Is Nursing Informatics and Why Is It So Important? https://www.nursingworld.org/content-hub/resources/nursing-resources/nursing-informatics/

Backonja, U., Langford, L. H., & Mook, P. J. (2021). How to support the nursing informatics leadership pipeline. Computers, Informatics, Nursing, Publish Ahead of Print(1). https://doi.org/10.1097/cin.0000000000000827

Backonja, U., Mook, P., & Heermann, L. L. (2021). Calling nursing informatics leaders: Opportunities for personal and professional growth.  The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 26(3). https://doi.org/10.3912/ojin.vol26no03man06

Delaney, C. W., Weaver, C. A., Sensmeier, J., Pruinelli, L., & Weber, P. (2022). Nursing and informatics for the 21st century: Embracing a digital world. Book 1 Realizing Digital Health, Bold Challenges, and Opportunities for Nursing. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003054849-8/informatics-large-health-systems-organization-transformation-nursing-informatics-leadership-perspectives-sheila-ochylski-rebecca-freeman

HealthIT.gov. (2021). National trends in hospital and physician adoption of electronic health records. 

www.healthit.gov/data/quickstats/national-trends-hospital-and-physician-adoption-electronic-health-records.

Kim, H. N. (2019). A conceptual framework for interdisciplinary education in engineering and nursing health informatics. Nurse Education Today, 74(3), 91–93. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2018.12.010

Lord, N. (2020). Healthcare cybersecurity: Tips for securing private health data. Digital Guardian. https://www.digitalguardian.com/blog/healthcare-cybersecurity-tips-securing-private-health-data

Peltonen, L., Connor, S. O., Conway, A., Cook, R., Currie, L. M., Goossen, W., Hardiker, N. R., Kinnunen, U., Ronquillo, C., Topaz, M., & Rotegard, A. K. (2023). Nursing informatics’ contribution to one health. Yearbook of Medical Informatics, 32(01), 065–075. https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0043-1768738

Sensmeier, J., & Anderson, C. (2021). Tracking the impact of nursing informatics. Nursing Made Incredibly Easy!, 19(1), 49–53. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.nme.0000723408.80090.47

Webb, N. (2021). Nursing informatics as caring: A literature review. Line Journal of Nursing Informatics, 25(1). https://www.proquest.com/openview/9ad85a2c5a668d2f08ef4e246140bbc7/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=2034896

Zhou, Y., Li, Z.,& Li, Y. (2021). Interdisciplinary collaboration between nursing and engineering in health care: A scoping review. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 117(3), 103900, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2021.103900