Capella 4040 Assessment 1 : Nursing Informatics in Health Care

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Capella University

Capella 4040 Assessment 1

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What is Nursing Informatics?

Nursing informatics (NI) is appearing as a new concept. It is important to define nursing informatics to direct the role of nursing informaticist for nurses who are eager to go into this field. This will enable them to take a direction in practice, education, training, and research. Nursing Informatics (NI) is defined by the Australian College of Nursing as the field of nursing science which is formed by the integration of diverse information and analytical sciences. The NI aims at finding, defining, arranging, and communicating information, data, wisdom, and knowledge in the clinical nursing practice. It involves the use of three well-secured scientific areas including information science, computer science, and nursing science (Harerimana et al., 2021).

NI has multiple perspectives at different levels as an independent career. It is far more than merely utilizing health technologies. Nursing informatics expertise has significantly grown over the last three decades among the health care systems and nursing practices. A study reported against the literature available on NI showed various nursing informatics competencies such as nursing informatics expertise for students, novice nurses, or generalist nurses, competencies related to nursing informatics for nurses with specific duties, suggestions for agreement on describing basic nursing informatics expertise globally and estimating the competencies of nursing informatics in future with emerging nursing responsibilities (Kleib et al., 2021).

Role of Nurses in Nursing Informatics

Nurses play an important role in the continuum of care in healthcare organizations and makeup one of the biggest health services providers. Moreover, nurses are responsible for information exchange and patient data transmission within the healthcare organization to enhance cooperation and collaboration among other healthcare professionals. Nowadays nurses work as nurse informaticists by directly involving in information systems and information technology for performing various functions. They use  IT services for evidence-based practices, clinical decision support (CDS) systems, and electronic health records (EHR).

According to American Nursing Informatics Association, nurses who are specialized in informatics utilize nursing, computer, and information science for the collection, processing, and management of data. This collected data then provides the rules of nursing, clinical care, education, and research and generates nursing knowledge. This leads to better patient care provision and improved patient health outcomes (Zareshahi et al., 2022). Nurse informaticists also serve as educators, connectors, and advocators by using multiple strategies such as communicating system updates, describing the use of telehealth, connecting healthcare professionals to resources, assisting in education, and finding IT inaccuracies (Strudwick et al., 2019). By the identification of statistics related to patient data and health outcomes and conveying the results of these statistics to nurses and other healthcare professionals, nurse informaticists can help improve patients’ health outcomes (Brixey et al., 2020).

Capella 4040 Assessment 1

Nurse informaticist promotes decision-making through direct and indirect participation in nursing responsibilities by gathering, drawing, accumulating, investigating, and predicting standardized data by the use of evolving data science rules and strategies. By the nursing records, nurse informaticist shares patient care plan and information within a healthcare organization. They are also able to communicate with other nurses and clinicians which results in better quality and continuity of care provided to patients. The growing use of electronic health record (EHR) systems are a means of expanding knowledge regarding nursing practices with the help of patient data.. Nurse informaticist also provides a positive impact on the safety of services and quality in hospitals.

This is done by decreasing the incidences of adverse drug events. The adoption of a documentation strategy by nurse informaticists is a means of providing error-free records of patients’ status and requirements at a certain time (Park & Park, 2022). Nurse informaticists can contribute to playing effective roles in nursing documentation systems and clinical decision support systems. They can also serve in the patient monitoring and observation systems to collect and evaluate patient monitoring data. Nurse informaticists can contribute to warning devices and call systems, patient follow-up, and tracking systems. Moreover, telenursing and simulations with evolving technology are also areas in which nurse informaticists can take part. In short, Nurse informaticists can optimize nursing healthcare services to further improve patient safety, patient satisfaction, quality of care, and data availability (Şendi̇r et al., 2019).  

 Interprofessional Collaboration of Nurse Informaticists

   Nurses in general are great collaborators as they have to remain connected to health care professionals and patients to provide appropriate and accurate care treatment. They need to estimate the health improvement in patients’ disease status by continuously evaluating health outcomes. Afterward, they are to send the evaluated data to clinicians for further planning of treatment based on evaluated health outcomes. They collaborate with patients’ families, making communication one of the competencies in their professional role. Nurse informaticists specifically collaborate with healthcare professionals in terms of providing patient data and disease status. They also work with technologists for the effective working of health information systems and accurate data extraction. The teamwork of nurse informaticists with technologists, fellow informaticist nurses, registered nurses, clinicians, and lab technologists improves the quality of patient care by providing accurate patient care according to their needs (Şendi̇r et al., 2019).  

In a study report, the interdisciplinary collaboration of nurse informaticists in epigenetic research showed that optimized lifestyle choices could be brought in to prevent cancer growth with the help of nurse informaticists. (Milner et al., 2023). Interdisciplinary collaboration can improve patient safety, and health outcomes as all the healthcare team members along with technologists and nurse informaticists can put in medical and non-medical joint efforts. The patient-centered care as a result of the interprofessional collaboration will optimize patient health outcomes with improved patient safety.

Need for Nurse Informaticist in Health Care Organizations

With the advancements in health information technology (HIT), healthcare organizations need to utilize the HIT in both the diagnosis-treatment systems and clinical information systems. These emerging advancements in HIT have created more roles for nurses to take upon such as nursing informatics specialists. This can enable nurses to access information, use, document, and archive them to make better clinical decisions and solve the patients’ health problems more rapidly and effectively. Therefore, nursing informaticists are crucial for any healthcare organization to recruit for improving patient health outcomes and the quality of healthcare (Sensmeier et al., 2020). These overall contributions not only improve patient care but also lessen the workload with the help of technology and improve the workflow with HIT and interdisciplinary collaboration (Freeman & Wilson, 2023).

For example, Content Management Systems (CMS) are technologies that can be used along with EHR to ameliorate data handling functions and increase workflow efficiency in nursing informatics (Ang, 2019). NI also helps secure the data by archiving sensitive data related to patients or healthcare services. This is done with the aid of HIT in the form of encrypted apps or other portals, that can be secured with passwords. Undoubtedly, the costs of recruiting a nurse informaticist are significantly higher but the return on investment is assured as the use of healthcare information technology saves financial costs that incur on documenting the record on paper. NI also helps in minimizing errors in medication and treatment which can ultimately reduce the costs to healthcare organizations (Farokhzadian et al., 2020). 

Evidence-Based Strategies to Manage Protected Health Information

Health organizations should abide by the law of privacy, security, and confidentiality regarding patients’ protected health information. There are various evident ways by which nurse informaticists can secure patients’ Protected Health Information (PHI) with interprofessional collaboration. One such strategy based on evidence is blockchain-based electronic health record which is based on using hashes on every new data entry and is operated by only those who have the key to that blockchain. This results in the safe stay of data within EHR and protects patients’ PHI (Tanwar et al., 2020).

Another strategy to secure and preserve the PHI of patients is by implementing the Privacy Preserving Ciphertext Policy Attribute-Based Encryption (PPCP-ABE) protocol. Nursing informaticists in collaboration with other health professionals can provide the hospitals with this security scheme. This protocol can enable nursing informaticists and healthcare professionals to create the right decryption key for users and reduce the chances of leakage of patients’ protected health information (Liang et al., 2019). 

Summary of Recommendations

With advancing HIT, healthcare organizations create opportunities for new roles to take for nurses. One such role is a Nursing Informatics specialized nurse who can optimize patient care and safety with the right use of HIT in nursing practices. Following are a few contributions of nurse informaticists in healthcare systems:

• They can provide services in all areas of nursing by using HIT such as utilizing EHR, CMS, telenursing, patient monitoring and observation systems, etc. (Şendi̇r et al., 2019). 
• Their interprofessional collaboration with technologists and other healthcare professionals can improve security, patient safety, less workload, and lower costs to healthcare systems (Freeman & Wilson, 2023). 
• NI with other healthcare teams can safeguard the protected health information of patients in a better way by using advanced strategies such as blockchain-based EHR (Tanwar et al., 2020).
•  Another evolved attribute-based encryption, such as the most advanced PPCP-ABE scheme is promising in securing patient’s protected health information. (Liang et al., 2019).

References

Ang, R. J. (2019). Use of content management systems to address nursing workflow. International Journal of Nursing Sciences, 6(4). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnss.2019.09.012 

Brixey, J., Salyer, P., & Simmons, D. (2020). Nightingale power: The advent of nursing informatics. Nursing Management, 51(7), 51–53. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.numa.0000669104.92938.0a 

Farokhzadian, J., Khajouei, R., Hasman, A., & Ahmadian, L. (2020). Nurses’ experiences and viewpoints about the benefits of adopting information technology in health care: A qualitative study in iran. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, 20(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12911-020-01260-5 

Freeman, R., & Wilson, M. L. (2023). Starting at the top: Developing an informatics-competent and capable nursing workforce. Nursing Management, 54(5), 6–10. https://doi.org/10.1097/nmg.0000000000000016 

Harerimana, A., Wicking, K., Biedermann, N., & Yates, K. (2021). Nursing informatics in undergraduate nursing education in Australia before COVID-19: A scoping review. Collegian, 29(4). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.colegn.2021.11.004 

Kleib, M., Chauvette, A., Furlong, K., Nagle, L., Slater, L., & McCloskey, R. (2021). Approaches for defining and assessing nursing informatics competencies. JBI Evidence Synthesis, Publish Ahead of Print(4). https://doi.org/10.11124/jbies-20-00100 

Liang, P., Zhang, L., Kang, L., & Ren, J. (2019). Privacy-preserving decentralized ABE for secure sharing of personal health records in cloud storage. Journal of Information Security and Applications, 47, 258–266. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jisa.2019.05.012 

Milner, J. J., Zadinsky, J. K., & Shiao, S. P. K. (2023). Nursing informatics and epigenetics: Methodological considerations for big data analysis. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, Publish Ahead of Print. https://doi.org/10.1097/cin.0000000000000992 

Park, J., & Park, J. (2022). Identifying the knowledge structure and trends of nursing informatics. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 41(1).  https://doi.org/10.1097/cin.0000000000000919 

Şendi̇rM., Kizil, H., & Açiksöz, S. (2019). The reflection of healthcare informatics systems on nursing practices. Sakarya Üniversitesi Holistik Sağlık Dergisi, 2(1), 2–9. https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/sauhsd/issue/45374/473271 

Sensmeier, J., MS, M, R.-B. I., rowich, PhD, Baernholdt, R.-B. M., PhD, MPH, Carroll, R. W. M., MSN, Fields, R.-B. W., DNSc, Fong, R. V., MSN, Murphy, R. J., Omery, R. A., RN, DNSc, Rajwany, N.-B. N., & MS. (2020). Demonstrating the value of nursing care through the use of a unique nurse identifier | HIMSS. Retrieved from https://www.himss.org/resources/demonstrating-value-nursing-care-through-use-unique-nurse-identifier 

Strudwick, G., Booth, R. G., Bjarnadottir, R. I., Rossetti, S. (Collins), Friesen, M., Sequeira, L., Munnery, M., & Srivastava, R. (2019). The role of nurse managers in the adoption of health information technology. JONA: The Journal of Nursing Administration, 49(11), 549–555. https://doi.org/10.1097/nna.0000000000000810 

Tanwar, S., Parekh, K., & Evans, R. (2020). Blockchain-based electronic healthcare record system for healthcare 4.0 applications. Journal of Information Security and Applications, 50, 102407. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jisa.2019.102407 

Zareshahi, M., Mirzaei, S., & Nasiriani, K. (2022). Nursing informatics competencies in the critical care unit. Health Informatics Journal, 28(1), 146045822210838. https://doi.org/10.1177/14604582221083843

Capella 4040 Assessment 1