NURS 6401 week 4 Assignment Paper
Competencies for Nurse Informatics
As stated in my Week 1 discussion post, the position I am most interested in is becoming a Liaison. Being a liaison, a nurse informatics can work with an organization and help to integrate and facilitate implementation. “Informatics nurses frequently serve as the liaison between engineers and end users” (AMA, 2015, p. 25). Nurse informaticists must have knowledge of both the clinical side and the information technology side.NURS 6401 week 4 Assignment Paper
Within the field of nursing informatics, there are organizations that lay out competencies that should be mastered by nurse informatics. One of those organizations is Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN). This organization helps to prepare future nurses with knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to improve the quality and safety of the healthcare systems within which they work (QSEN, 2012). There are six main areas of education defined by QSEN. As a nurse informaticist liaison, teamwork and collaboration, along with informatics would be most important competencies to master.
Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) describes one of the competencies under informatics as “communicate the integral role of information technology in nurses’ work.” Mastery of this skill will not only help further the understanding of informatics, but help other staff nurses to see how influential and important informatics is in their everyday workflow. Another competency from QSEN under teamwork and collaboration is “lead or participate in the design and implementation of systems that support effective teamwork” (QSEN, 2012). Mastery of this skill will lead to more effective teamwork within the interdisciplinary team. Being able to have input in the design of a new technology and then translate that to end users can make transitions more smoothly during the implementation phase.
The Technology Informatics Guiding Education Reform, or TIGER initiatives are a set of three competencies including basic computer skills, information management and information literacy. Each of these skills is broken down into further competencies that should be mastered by the informatics. Within information literacy, the informaticist should “promote the integrity of nursing information and access necessary for patient care within an integrated computer-based patient record” (HIMSS, 2012). Mastering this competency would allow the liaison to practice in both nursing care and information technology. It will always be imperative that the informaticist remember what it is like to be a bedside nurse taking care of patients – this will make them more relatable to staff nurses when changes are being made that affect workflow. The second competency that would be necessary to use as a liaison is “Participating in influencing the attitudes of other nurses toward computer use for nursing practice” (HIMSS, 2012). This skill is needed to maintain stability amongst the staff nurses and the IT department. As a liaison, you are the middle person who translates IT into nursing and vice versa. Technology will never leave the healthcare industry and as more changes and updates occur, attitudes will most certainly fluctuate. The liaison will need to normalize attitudes and dispel negative attitudes towards change.
Mastering the above mentioned four skills laid out by QSEN and TIGER will help to become a better liaison within nursing informatics.NURS 6401 week 4 Assignment Paper
Nursing informatics is a discipline which integrates computer and information science with nursing profession. Informatics competencies are a must for every professional nurse nowadays. The basis of the nursing informatics competencies are user-level competencies related to working knowledge of basic software programs and processes (Park, Murray & Delaney, 2006). My current informatics competencies are the following. I have the skills of a regular computer user, keyboard typing skills, skills of using portable devices such as tablets and smartphones, and possess working knowledge of the following programs: word processors (basic text processors and MS Word), table processors and spreadsheets (MS Excel and Google Docs), software for creating presentations (MS Power Point) and databases (basic knowledge of MS Access and creation of small databases in MS Excel). I am an experienced user of the internet, can search and evaluate information in the web, work with wikis, blogs and social media, can send email and use online messengers such as Skype. I can also set up and use software for managing emails such as MS Outlook. These competencies might be enough to fulfill basic nursing tasks, but I am eager to expand my knowledge of nursing informatics and acquire more specialized knowledge and skills in nursing informatics.
Registered nurses should be able to work with computer software at three levels – user level, modifier level and innovator level (Park, Murray & Delaney, 2006). Currently most of my competencies are at the user level. I would like to improve my technical competencies at modifier and innovator level. In particular, I would like to learn how to apply technology support in order to provide evidence-based nursing practice, how to synthesize data from different sources, how to use decision support systems, etc. With regard to nursing-specific skills, I would like to learn how to design, implement and analyze EMR, how to use software-based protocols and patient tracking software, to gain experiences with electronic drug guides, medication administration software, etc.
Using the information and skills gained during the nursing informatics course, I will be able to demonstrate the capacity for professional leadership in the 21st century healthcare environment; I will be able to explain my thoughts and ideas to the audience, engage and motivate others and effectively achieve my professional goals. Advanced knowledge of nursing informatics will allow me to share information and maintain information security, create and manage relevant content and support others in using the relevant software and sources of information.NURS 6401 week 4 Assignment Paper
The role or nurses and the scope of nursing have been transformed by the use of computerized information management systems. For nursing, the relevant computerized information management systems are also referred to as clinical information systems (Hunt, Sproat & Kitzmiller, 2004). The processes of automating patient care have changed the responsibilities of nurses and requirements towards their skills. Using clinical information systems, nurses can optimize their administrative responsibilities, reduce the number of errors, reduce costs of these responsibilities and devote more time to direct patient care (Thede & Sewell, 2010). In addition to this, nurses now can effectively use expert knowledge provided by the information systems to improve the quality of care and to integrate evidence-based practices in their workflows (Hunt, Sproat & Kitzmiller, 2004). Therefore, in order to respond to the changing needs of the clinical environment, nurses should have working knowledge of nursing informatics, understand the principles and processes of computerized information management systems and use the technology to improve the quality of patient care.