Nursing Informatics

Nursing Informatics

Nursing Informatics 

Introduction

The worlds of health care, communication, and information technologies are ever evolving, separately and together. As nurses in the the community expand thier practice definition to embrace new information technologies, opportunities for improved health care to populations seem endless. This evolution is seen as a merger of health care technology with information and communications technology, fostering the design and implementation of health care management information systems in a variety of clinical practice settings.the clinical practice settings involved in this new technology include both the acute care and community-based practice environments. Organizations such as hospitals and community-based agencies such as public health departements and home agencies use information and communications technologies to collect, restore, retrieve, analyze, and present client care data in the care delivery settings. Health care continues to be a human endeavor that is necessarily complex in nature. Decisions related to client care continue to increase in complexity, with the need for rapid, accurate information for clinical decisions making as a priority for effective care. 

Definition of Nursing Informatics

Nursing Informatics uses nursing science, computer and communications technologies to produce effective and efficient client outcomes for individuals and communities. 

Informatics

Informatics generally can be defined as the art and science of turning data into information. The more recently informatics defined as the study of the application of computer tcchnology and ststistical techniques to the management of information.

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Nursing Informatics 

Medical informatics refers to the application of informatics to all

of healthy care disciplins as well as to the practice of medicine. 

Nursing informatics is the use of information and computer

technology to support all aspects of nursing including the direct delivery of care, administration, education, and research. The nurse can use the information technology to manag and process the information with the assistence of the computer. Informatics provides tools to help to process, store, retrive and analyze data and information to improve patient care. The nurse should search for more and new knowledge from different source and maintaing continuing education. Informatics can help her in this role and can provide computerized assessment and documentation forms that facilitat data collection and maintain right information at right time. This saves her time and effort. The goal is to ensure that data collected and housed within automated record system to be available as information for health care professional, administrative and research personnel. Informatics helps nurses in project management, consultation, clinical, practice, administration, education and research, so all nurses need to establish a level of awareness and competence in it. 

There are four levels of informatics competencies.

1- The Beginning Nurse → have a fundamental information and management skills. 2- The Experienced Nurse → highly skilled in use of informatics to support her practice. 3- Informatics Nurse Specialist → has advanced preparation in information management, she focuses on applications to support nursing practice and use skills in critical thinking, decision making and system development. 4- Innovator Nurse → Conducts informatics research and general informatics theory and creative in developing solutions and has a sophisticated level of understanding and skills in computer technology. 2

Nursing Informatics

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General Application

Nursing Practice → medication instructions, discharge instructions for patients. Administration → automated staff scheduling. Education → Access to library and internet sources for students. Research → Computerized literature searching. It will add to nursing knowledge, improving quality of care, and provide high level of competence of patients care. Internet can provide marketing services such as job postings, advertisment of health srvices, dissemenation and revision of product information and on line risk assessment. 

The Science of Nursing Informatics

The emergence of the specialty known as nursing informatics is not a recent phenomenon. That nurses have been using computers since the 1950s and emerged as an advanced specialty in the 1980s. According to Graves and Corcoran devised aconceptual framwork describes the relationship among computer science, information systems science, and nursing science. That believed that information management processing of nursing data is achieved through the collection of data, the transformation of nursing data into nursing information, the finally into nursng knowledge. Nursing Data

Nursing . information

Nursing knowledge

For example The collection of individual data element "Raw Data" the transition of raw data to knowledge is a three phased process. "Nursing Data" is the raw data such as client name, age, gender, diagnosis when the nurse form a relationships between the raw data elements " form fully picture of client's clinical status this is called "Nursing Information " then the nurse acts on this information by formulating a set of interventions to 3

Nursing Informatics

deal with the particulars of a specific client care situation. That are in a form that can be subjects to analysis and interpretation. Nursing information realidy lends itself to archiving or storage in computer data bases that allow rational grouping of nursing information then allows for aggregation of information and the systematic study of nursing related phenomena . sets of nursng information that conform to theoretical and conceptul frameworks are known as " Nursing Knowledge" Hence, computerized information systems used in the comunity health nursing practice setting can assist in the development of nursing knowlege throuhgh the automated process of collecting. 

Benefits of Nursing Informatics for Community Halth Nursing. 1- Help in collect client data for other disciplines, the profession

nursing leads the way in data collection, the use of stadardized language classifications, and design support for automated systems that can assist in supporting the integration of other health care disiplines that help to coordinate care. 2- Help to transfere data into knowledge, such as data about client or

caregiver and also organization agency & community resources also data about domain specific data such as health care providers and outcomes to CHN interventions. 3- The nurse can use the information technology to manage and

process the information with the assistance of the computer. 4- Informatics provides tools to help to process, store, retrieve and analyze data and information to improve patient care. 5- The nurse can search for more information from different sources and maintaining continuing education. 6- It can help the nurse by providing computerized assesssment and

documentation forms that facilitate data collection and maintain right information at right time. This saves her time and effort. 4

Nursing Informatics

7- In addition, it can help the nurse in project mannagement, clinical practice and research. 8- Computerized literature searching is one of the informatics applications in field research. 9- Informatics also will add to nursing knowledge, improving quality of care, and provide high level of competence of patint care. 10-

Internet can provide marketing services such as job posting,

advertisements of health services and online risk assessment. 11- The web-based management provides a way to monitor large

number of clients efficiently on daily basis and avoid unnecessary hospital admission. 12- Surveillance is another aspect of public health that could be

dramatically transformed by the application of information technology. 

Client Information Management.

Collection of client related clinical data takes a considrable amount of time and effort, CHN require accurate assessment of clients for appropriate management. This information can be stored for future retrieval, and the aggregation of this information can be analyzed for the benefit of the community. This process also help CHN to saving time, provide efficiency informations, according to Bargstadt ( 1998) described several benefits of informations systems use in the community setting. 1- Collcting data to demonstrate clinical effectiveness of community health nursing care delivery to a specific population. 2- Analyzing the collected clinical data for statistical comparison. 3- Determining the cost- effectiveness of CHN programs on the care of clients and caregivers. 4- Using cost- effective data collection for outcome measurement.

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Nursing Informatics

 Web Based Management Provides a way to monitor large numbers of clients efficiently on a daily basis. But the largest concern is th security of cliect data while the lesser concerns include viral contamination and lack of adherence to internet standars. Electronic Health → Brings information, products and services on line. Electronic care → refers to the automation of all parts of the care delivery process across adminstrative, clinical and departemental boundraies.  Health Care Information System Refersd to a group of systems used within a hospital or enterprise that support and enhance health care. It includes clinical information systems and administrative information system.  Nursing Information System Supports the use and documentation of nursing process, activities and provide tools for managing the delivery of nursing care to improve quality of care and documentation. Electronic prescribing :- allows the physician to enter a prexription into an information system. This information is electronically communicated to the client s' pharmacy.  Application: Home Health Care & Tele Health.

Telecommunication technology can reduce home health care costs and increase freguency and availability of health services. It provides accessibility to support groups, treatment, information and electronic communication with health care providerts. Also it helps the clinician to monitor and handle more number of clients. For example women with high risk pregnancies, clients with chronic health problems , elderly and postoperative clients. It elimenates the travelling, waiting and discomfort of elderly through televisits. It can be used to remember the client to take his medication so it reduces the risk of

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Nursing Informatics

complications and number of hospital visits. It also supports the data collection and documentation by using technology. Web Based Solution for care coordination can integrate results from biometric measures and diagnostics tests to antomatically alert the clinican about the panic values. Elderly with hearing problems can use the mail order to maintain communication and not use the telephone conversation. In elderly homes, the institution can use monitoring system which contain sensors to detect falls and alert the nurse to the problem. Also she can use informatics in data collection and documentation .telecommunication and web based management can used in elderly homes.community health nurse should create a strategy that puts them in control of their roles to improve the CHN in balance with the rapid technology.

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