NURS 6025 week 1 Essay Discussion
Transforming Nursing & Healthcare through Technology
Technology is always improving, and this is empowering nursing innovators to find ways to make our process’ better. Making advancement in technology with nursing informatics is giving all nurses what they need to be available at their fingertips to better take care of patients (Laureate, 2012e). What is nursing informatics? Laureate (2012e) says, “Nursing informatics is a way to capture what nurses normally do at the bedside in an electronic format.” Nursing informatics is so needed since the birth of the electronic medical record (EMR). NURS 6025 week 1 Essay Discussion
The development of EMR has improved patient safety and made their records easily asses sable at any location that has access. Robles (2009) says, “the EMR’s contributions to patient safety: improved legibility; interfaced data validation with monitoring equipment; automatic alerts for allergies, drug interactions, and medication doses; and suggestions for proper care planning based on specific diagnoses or specific database criteria.” The medical record availability for patients to access their records for the betterment of their health has made an enormous impact and help also to build relationships with their medical providers. Wakefield (2008) says, “Quality Chasm cited evidence that giving patients access to their own health and clinical information improves care processes and health outcomes.” NURS 6025 week 1 Essay Discussion
Every year almost 100,000 people die from hospital medical errors (Kohn, 2000). Kohn (2000) also states, “The Quality of Health Care in America Committee of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) concluded that it is not acceptable for patients to be harmed by the health More commonly, errors are caused by faulty systems, processes, and conditions that lead people to make mistakes or fail to prevent them. Care system that is supposed to offer healing and comfort–a system that promises, ‘First, do no harm.” (p.2). How do we help as nurses improve these numbers? We are striving at the hospital where I am an employee at to make strides to decrease these errors by having the patients check our work. Providing someone to visit from admissions with every patient directly and set up their “My Chart”-a program so patients can directly access their medical records and make corrections, correlate with staff or directly contact their physician, change their medications, record new allergies, and where they can view current lab work. My Chart- has improved overall patient care, and our Patient Satisfaction Surveys reflect it.
Also, in our hospital, we currently in the last couple years have gone from paper charting to EMR system called Epic. It has made our hospital flow better by allowing multiple dictations, to view all lab work at once, improved communication between the clinics, having all disciplines see the complete chart at one, and much more. We have noticed that errors have improved and patients are getting better care. To err is human- such a true statement especially in nursing but with Epic it has got a lot better in the 200-bed hospital I work at, and our nursing informatic team is trying daily to improve it with constant updates and education.
References
Kohn, L. T., Corrigan, J. M., & Donaldson, M.S. (Eds.). (2000). To err is human: Building a safer health system. Washington, D. C.: Institute of Medicine. Retrieved from the National Academies Press Website: https://download.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=9728
Laureate Education (Producer). (2012e). Introduction to nursing informatics. Baltimore, MD: Author.
Robles, J. (2009). The effect of the electronic medical record on nurses’ work. Creative Nursing, 15(1), 31-35.
Wakefield, M. K. (2008). The Quality Chasm series: Implications for nursing. In R. G. Hughes(Ed.), Patient safety and quality: An evidence-based handbook for nurses(Vol. 1, pp. 47-66). Rockville, MD: U. S. Department of Health and Human Services.NURS 6025 week 1 Essay Discussion