Essay Example on Nurse Informatics: Leveraging Electronic Health Info for Better Patient Care

Introduction

Electronic health information and patient care technology is essential in healthcare decision making. The information helps in improving safety, patient care, effectiveness, communication, time efficiency, as well as equity. Electronic health information benefits nurses by preventing drug interactions, facilitating access to the medical history of patient's information as well as providing medication reminders. Electronic health information can be developed effectively by nurse informatics. The nurse informatics also helps in improving technology that eases the operations of nurses and other clinical staff.

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Nursing Informatics and the Role of the Nurse InformaticistNursing informatics is defined as the field in nursing that involves information science, nursing, and computer science to develop and maintain medical data and systems that facilitate patient care (Sweeney, 2017). Nursing informatics helps in integrating the nursing information and the people and the community to help in reducing the costs incurred to access healthcare. Nursing informatics helps in sharing patients' medical history information with the doctors to facilitate decision making. The role of nurse informatics also includes developing and maintaining technologies that keep medical records in a computerized way.

Protected Health Information

One of the roles of a nurse informaticist is developing and maintaining the technology for promoting the security of patient's electronic health records. The hired nurse informaticist will significantly help the organization in developing and implementing the information technology system. Through the implementation of firewalls, the security of the electronic records of the patients will be enhanced. Firewalls implemented either internally or externally secure the organization's network (Kruse, Smith, Vanderlinden, & Nealand, 2017).

The second strategy used in promoting the security of electronic health records is cryptography. This is achieved through encryption, which prevents promotes the security of data during the exchange process. Digital signatures are used to prevent security breaches, which highly occur when the patient is viewing personal information (Kruse, Smith, Vanderlinden, & Nealand, 2017). The technology also promotes security by ensuring that only authorized clinical officers can access electronic health records. Each officer can only access the information through a unique username and password. To promote the effectiveness of this strategy, the nurses and other authorized personnel should frequently change their passwords.

To prevent internal breaches, the nurse informaticist will apply role-based access control. Through this method, the health professionals with be allowed access to the information that is only related to their role (Kruse, Smith, Vanderlinden, & Nealand, 2017). This information is accessed through a username and password that is generated by the informaticist. Additionally, the informaticist will educate the nurses on the importance of logging off after accessing the network and ensure that when accessing the information, it is visible to any other personnel.

The Need for a Nurse Informaticist in a Health Care Organization

It's important for the chief nursing officer (CNO) and human resources (HR) manager to recognize that the nurse informaticist collaborates with other stakeholders in developing and maintaining the electronic systems used to save and share patients' data with relevant stakeholders (McBride & Tietze, 2018). The collaboration ensures that all the aspects of the data are integrated into the system. The systems keep on being updated to incorporate new requirements and recommendations of the medical professionals that use the systems in improving the quality of patient care. Healthcare providers need to have nursing informaticists to help the healthcare provider organize patient's data for easy accessibility and increase the quality of healthcare services offered. Patient medical history is key in improving healthcare services.

The Experience of Other Health Care Organizations with Nurse Informaticists

Other healthcare facilities that have nurse informaticists have benefited from the streamlining of operation where they have embraced technology in storing medical records helping the health professional get the history of the patients faster (Sweeney, 2017). The doctors make decisions based on the health history of the patients. Patient care has improved in healthcare I facilities with nurse informaticists. Such organizations have been able to protect health information by embracing the health care systems that store and facilitate the sharing of the information. The workflow has also been streamlined, and healthcare professionals do not waste time trying to find files that contain the medical history of the patient.

Opportunities and Challenges for Nurses and the Interdisciplinary Team

There are challenges and opportunities that come when the health facility hires nurse informacists for the nurses and the entire interdisciplinary team. The opportunities include nursing getting a chance to learn how to develop systems to solve challenges that they face on their line of duty (McBride & Tietze, 2018). The nurses learn how the information systems work in helping the healthcare professional save patient's information digitally for easy and quick retrieval. There are also opportunities to get new ideas on how the systems work and dealing with errors that they will face when using the systems (McBride & Tietze, 2018). The challenges to be faced by the interdisciplinary team includes converting the ideas into a working system through coding. The nurses do not have a technology background; hence they are not likely to understand the system development. More time will be required to develop the system.

Costs and Return on Investment

A nurse informaticist is paid an annual salary of approximately $66,000 (Nurse Jounal, 2019). Adding this role to the organization translates to an additional payroll expense of such a significant amount. However, there is a return on the investment since the efficiency of the professional boost, reduces costs, and promotes patient care through the development and maintenance of electronic health records technology. The use of technology will also help in reducing medication errors and avoiding drug interaction, thus effectively treating the patients.

The collaboration of the Interdisciplinary Team to Improve Quality Care Outcomes through Technology

The interdisciplinary team needs to collaborate to improve quality care outcomes through technology. The collaboration includes identifying the data parameters that need to be included in the system to ensure no information is left out when recording the information (Sweeney, 2017). The interdisciplinary team will also help the nurse informaticist understand the users of the systems to enable the customization of the system to meet user needs. The interdisciplinary team knows the health facility well, including the challenges the facility is likely to face using the information system to save patient health history. The interdisciplinary team will help the nurse informaticist understand the health facility.

Recommendations

Electronic health records promote patient care and safety as well as enhancing security, privacy, and confidentiality. This can be achieved by hiring a nurse informaticist who helps in developing and maintaining technology used to electronically store data and transmit data. To achieve the intended purpose of adding the role to the organization, the human resource manager should ensure that they high somebody who is highly qualified and experienced. When hiring, the human resource manager should emphasize the technical development and systems evaluation skills and experience besides nursing skills. Additionally, the organization should hire someone passionate about transforming health record keeping.

Take Away points

Electronic health records and the use of technology are important in nursing decision making. A nurse informaticist helps in developing and maintaining technology for capturing patient information and creating patient history. The technology helps in reducing medical errors as well as reducing cases of drug interactions. The professional also helps in promoting electronic health security and privacy. Hiring a nurse informaticist, however, means that the payroll expenses will be increased by approximately $ 66,000 hence the need to hire a highly skilled and experienced professional.

References

Kruse, C. S., Smith, B., Vanderlinden, H., & Nealand, A. (2017). Security techniques for electronic health records. Journal of medical systems, 41(8), 127.

Kruse, C. S., Smith, B., Vanderlinden, H., & Nealand, A. (2017). Security techniques for electronic health records. Journal of medical systems, 41(8), 127.

McBride, S., & Tietze, M. (2018). Nursing informatics for the advanced practice nurse: patient safety, quality, outcomes, and interprofessionalism. Springer Publishing Company.

Sweeney, J. (2017). Healthcare informatics. Online Journal of Nursing Informatics, 21, 4-1.