Nursing Informatics

Nursing Informatics

Question 1: Benefits

In a clinical setting, there are multiple tools that can be used to provide health care services. Tracking clinical outcomes entails the identification of improvement areas, the selection of necessary requirements to assess such areas, and acquiring a baseline of the existent practices by use of measures selected. It is important for a medical practitioner to monitor or reassess how the improvement efforts affect measure performance. Therefore, EHR (Electronic Health Record) is a system tool that can be helpful in tracking and analyzing patient information (Parsons et al., 2012).

EBP (Evidence Based Practice) refers to the process of application of evidence in making clinical decisions. Nursing professionals also consider patient expectations and clinical experience. EBP is applied in several fields including allied health, psychology, and medicine.  Clinical experts assess the available evidence using hierarchies with the gold standard Cochrane reviews (Stevens, 2013). Examples of such hierarchies include Joanna Briggs Levels of Evidence and EPB evidence pyramid.

NPDC (Nursing Professional Development Competency) is a staff development tool applicable in the provision of professional development to nursing specialists via a framework of competence and career development. The tool can be utilized in measurement and demonstration of proficiency, training, and personal development. 

Question 2: Driving Forces and Barriers

Change aversion in a nursing environment is nearly impossible. Integration of EHR in a nursing system is one of the aspects of change sweeping across the healthcare sector. Resultantly, clinical practitioners exhibit attitudes that vary widely towards change and integration of technology in the workplace. According to Kurt Lewin’s force field model, an equivalence of restraining and driving forces inhibits change from occurring (Kaminski, 2011). Some of the driving forces towards the adoption of EHR include the improvement of data accessibility, computerization of physician order entry (CPOE) and charge capture.  The rising need for improved data accessibility drives the management of health facilities to consider EHR adoption. It makes data available for retrieval at all time thus eliminating the need for chart filing and physical transportation. Secondly, human errors made on hand-written prescriptions are reduced significantly because of CPOE that allows medical practitioners to conduct electronic prescriptions. Lastly, EHR allows healthcare corporations to track how the patients use hospital resources hence ensuring accountability (Kutney-Lee & Kelly, 2011).

Some of the barriers are “copy-and-paste” function, violations of HIPAA and empty automated data fields. If EHR is eventually integrated, there is a risk of health practitioners becoming lazy by utilizing the shortcut of copy-paste function. The quality of healthcare will deteriorate and a risk of patient safety will become greater. Second, unauthorized persons can easily access sensitive information due to increased privacy violations. Lastly, automated machines are prone to malfunction and errors. Replacing humans with machines in a healthcare facility poses a problem of information inaccuracy that can yield fatal results during surgery.

Question 3: How Clinicians use Human Interface Technology

Nurses have a timely and unrestricted access to health records as electronic healthcare systems become interoperable. As such, there is an establishment of communication between multidisciplinary teams of caregivers. Human interface technology allows immunizations and allergies to be shared easily with other systems for immediate action (Staggers, 2012).  In addition, application of electronic health records system ensures that nurses provide a high quality of care to the sick.

Social and organizational factors influence adoption of human interface technology in health care provision. Some of the organizational factors include the restrictive policies put in place by the management, the organizational culture that encourages the application of information technology, or managerial commitment to embrace change for efficiency in service delivery (Blumenthal, 2011). Socially, the relationship between nursing and technology has been complex and tumultuous for decades. It is still an uphill task today to for nurses to define an exact role of technology interface. Uncertainties like this negatively affect the societal view on the need for human interface technology thus leading to inefficiencies.

References

Blumenthal, D. (2011). Stimulating the Adoption of Health Information Technology. New England journal of medicine, 360(15), 1477-1479.

Kaminski, J. (2011). Theory applied to informatics-Lewin’s change theory.Canadian Journal of Nursing Informatics, 6(1), 1-4.

Kutney-Lee, A., & Kelly, D. (2011). The effect of Hospital Electronic Health Record Adoption on Nurse-Assessed Quality of Care and Patient Safety. The Journal of Nursing Administration, 41(11), 466.

Parsons, A., McCullough, C., Wang, J., & Shih, S. (2012). The validity of Electronic Health Record-Derived Quality Measurement for Performance Monitoring. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 19(4), 604-609.

Staggers, N. (2012). A Systematic Review of the Designs of Clinical Technology: Findings and Recommendations for Future Research. ANS. Advances in Nursing Science, 32(3), 252.

Stevens, K. (2013). The Impact of Evidence-Based Practice in Nursing and the Next Big Ideas. The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 18(2).