The Impact of Nursing Informatics on Patient Outcomes and Patient Care Efficiencies - Paper Example

Technology is the foundation of the future healthcare system. Modernization of healthcare can be best viewed if compared to how we were in the past years and where we are today. The primary focus of new knowledge and concepts in healthcare technology is the efficiency and quality of patient care. Worldwide Information technology is changing everything, including healthcare, by creating new opportunities and challenges in different fields. Healthcare organizations need to recognize the importance of communication between healthcare physicians and information technology worker force to solve the issue of patient care and create better positions for nurse experts (McCormick & Saba, 35). The nurse informatics is essential in the deliverance of healthcare processes, selection, evaluation, and implementation of healthcare.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Health care individuals associated with the field of nursing informatics play two types of roles. The specialist facilitates, create, tests, and implement new information technology to those who use health information. The integration of electronic medicine recommendation, mobile laboratories, and an online schedule of patients is essential. In fulfilling the information related activities, nurses must exchange and synchronize relevant technical and significant data to coordinate and support effective, safe, and to ensure efficient workflow. Stakeholders also contributed to the development of the project. The following are examples of stakeholders who impacted the project.

Financial stakeholders. Every project will bring an economic effect on the organization. Board members, for example, the monetary officer and the chief executive officer are the valuable assets in every planning stages. They assist the project managers in understanding the financial impacts of the project settings in the larger budget. The managers are enabled to understand the level of investment that is suitable for the key stakeholders. The project team is also allowed to align the project goals within the organizations' priorities and agenda. Due to the technicality nature of information technology, it is good to communicate the outcomes and scopes in a manner that is useful to the top-level stakeholders. As a manager, it was possible to frame things effectively demonstrated the value of the project to the organization's objectives (Zaccagnini & White, 17)

The second group was the medical leaders, includes the participants from all the medical functionalities of the hospital. That is from the department leaders to the chief pharmacy director who makes sure that the specific needs of their teams are not overlooked during the shifting process. By interaction with these personnel's, it became possible to address the concerns about the effects of the project and got valuable feedback. Through this group, it was possible to gain more credibility within the institute, which brought impetus to the project and kept us moving effectively until the completion of the project (McGonigle & Mastrian, 47) They also helped in selecting the information technology leaders towards valuable end-user stakeholders.

Clinicians were the third group involved. These served a vital role in implementing by acting as advocates to other clinicians, supporting the project and enhancing communication down and upstream. Ideally, the clinical champions are well versed in informatics and adopt the technology earlier in general. Another important stakeholder group was super users. These are skilled with the new system and assist their partners when they experience difficulties. Working with these champions and super users brought significant advantages, but ultimately, the failure or success of the project is beyond them. To ensure that these clinicians were effectively engaged, the organization provided resources that served as an intermediary between the medical staff and the information technology concerns (Ronquillo, Currie, & Rodney, 67)

The last groups were the patients and the vendors. Patient's perspective needs to be considered when the change that could directly alter the relationship between the patients and the clinicians. Reaching outpatients focus group helps in identifying technology-related problems that trouble them. Therefore, it is good to consider their opinions as stakeholders. Vendors are members of the project providing support for implementation. They ensure smooth integration when the implementation of the effects other soft wares used in the hospital. As a project leader, you are supposed to identify the kind of vendor support available. Either the direct support from the vendor's service team, tools for the existing staff or consultancy from the extensive experience working with system integration (Crawford, & Shabbir, 17). Lack of utilizing these resources could be a missed opportunity. The project also aimed at implementing the following technologies with the hospital, which would enhance the patient care and efficiency within the hospital.

Nurse documentation is a vigorous element of healthcare information. Information structures are designed for the nurses for better utilization of documentation to expand their knowledge of the quality of care. Nurses have benefited from these new concepts and continue to better and newer methods to improve patient care. Personal history of nurses is comprised in the practice which develops the way their nursing care is performed. The standards of practice, ethical, and legal obligation need to be utilized to supplement the quality of nursing care. Electronic recording of patients is important in the flow of information. Its usage will result in improving patient outcome, efficiency, and quality. As patient documentation is a vital skill in organizing and communicating patient's care according to the patient's needs. Patient's needs guide the nursing practice, and depending on these needs and different environments, different theories can be used for personal or individualized care.

Electronic documentation has a flow of sheets that assist in gathering information about the needs of the patient, enhancing the quality of patient care, and improving the patient's information accuracy. Well-designed systems provide and enhance the faster flow of information required documentation process. This method provides a plan to care for patients, direct patient care processes, and ensure efficient communication between clinicians. Nurses are supposed to be diligent in monitoring, coordinating, and delivering patient care to ensure effective flow of documentation. The computer-based software for the nurses allows the recovery, storage, collection, and integration of management resources with the clinical data (Collen & Ball, 29). In the past nurses believed the information system and electronic documentation were disruptions to their daily workflow. This ensures that nurses customized with the technology that has positive acceptance in its implementation. Nurses are proficient in all features of information technology in maintaining better patient care.

Electronic charting will help nurses in accessing information efficiently and quickly. It helps in improving the quality of nursing workflow. The nursing informatics authorities play an essential role in assisting nurses, addressing, and identifying the growing challenges. A lot of nursing theories have been designed to encourage the efficiency of the nursing practice. The informatics specialist uses these theories to provide guidance, technical assistance, and to direct patient care. The informatics nurse will help in building knowledge, skills, delivering care, and experiencing the use of information technology. With this, the clinical committee meetings will influence the nurses that will assist them in coordinating all the sophisticated technology activities regarding safety, documentation, and regard of patient's care.

Patients need to be educated on how to use the emerging technological devices, for example, the I-pads, the modern televisions, and other refined electronic devices. Through these, they can watch, explore their illness, and learn from them. The individual nursing practice is based on the arrangement of the clinician and patients. The forms of education offered to nurses assist in the provision of knowledge to the patients enabling them, to make quality decisions and understand their health. Patient's stability and safety depend on the workflow of nurses. The outcomes of the health care, for example, the quality of life trials results from the complex relationship between the treatment, the nurse, and the information healthcare system - the creation of strong foundation help in addressing the challenges within the electronic documentation. Nursing informatics understands and directs patient care within the organization structure and the technology system. Nursing perceptions, beliefs, and knowledge require integration with the usage to guarantee a successful implementation of a computer system to manage patient care.

To conclude, the combination of electronic prescribing, mobile laboratories, and online scheduling of appointments is important, in fulfilling all the related activities. The informatics nurses need to exchange and synchronize important technical issues and information to coordinate and support effective, safe, and efficient workflow. Healthcare industries also need to recognize the importance of communications between healthcare consultants and the information technology personnel to address the issue of patient efficiency and care to enable the creation of nurse informatics specialist positions. The stakeholders are also vital as they fund the project, which allows the success of the project. Use of technologies like electronic documentation of patients, electronic charting, and nursing documentation assists in maintaining the workflow of the nurses. Patients also need to be educated on how to use technology, for example, the I-pads, the modern televisions, and other sophisticated electronic devices from which, they can watch, learn, and explore their illness.

References

McCormick, K., & Saba, V., (2015). Essentials of nursing informatics. McGraw-Hill Education.

McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (Eds.). (2015). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.

Collen, M. F., & Ball, M. J. (Eds.). (2015). The history of medical informatics in the United States. Springer.

Zaccagnini, M., & White, K., (2015). The doctor of nursing practice essentials. Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Crawford, V., & Shabbir, S. A., (2016). Health Information Technologies for Geriatrics: The Big Picture. In Nursing Informatics (pp. 721-723).

Ronquillo, C., Currie, L. M., & Rodney, P. (2016). The evolution of data-information-knowledge-wisdom in nursing informatics. Advances in nursing science, 39(1), E1-E18.