Essay on Nursing Informatics: Roles of a Nursing Leader in Data Analysis & Quality Care

Introduction

Pepper (2020) explains Nursing Informatics as the practice of data analysis in healthcare by utilizing patients and hospital records to analyze trends and common misgivings within the industry. A nursing informaticist is responsible for providing timely information to guide policy implementations and organizational activities to facilitate evidence-based suggestions to improve the quality of healthcare services. This paper presents the roles of a nursing leader in the application and development of healthcare management and information systems. A nurse leader is crucial to directing team efforts towards the effective implementation, actualization, and utility of health information systems and the challenges management encounter when involving a nurse leader on the implementation team.

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The nurse manager and nurse leader roles often overlap (McNett, 2020). However, the two positions should not be used in substitution for the other. Though related, the two play complementary roles to each other. As the manager's role ensures administrative compliance with organizational standards, goals, and objectives of the healthcare industry, the nurse leader is a falcon of support to the entire team of healthcare professionals. The following also details the impact of nurse leaders in each step of the systems development life cycle.

The Role of Nurse Leader in Systems Development and Implementation

The Health Information Technology System (HITS) aims at improving healthcare provision through the analysis of data to synthesize health problems and predict health patterns. Throughout the implementation of the new nursing documentation system, the nurse leader is essential as a change agent to ensure a smooth transition from the old system to the new one documentation system to record patients' data (Allard, 2020). The new system is deemed superior for the organization from the present system as through preliminary analysis of the current data; the new system is considered more beneficial and professional to the healthcare industry.

Systems Development Life Cycle

Planning and requirements definition. The nurse leader is relevant at this stage to bring awareness and realization of the system's functionalities concerning the needs of the healthcare institutions. Selladurai et al. (2020) present that the necessities of the new system are well dispelled at this stage and the nurse leader considers everyone's efforts to the collective success of the healthcare system.

Analysis. At the analysis stage, the role of the nurse leader is to ensure smooth and effective communication to pass across information regarding the desired changes in the new system. The analysis stage assesses the current healthcare information technology systems and presents real case scenarios to deduce the shortcomings of the present system.

Design of the new system. During the implementation of the latest information system, the healthcare professional in question empowers the correct synthesis of the present healthcare system to structure an excellent new system. The nurse leader coordinates the stakeholder's views to present critical recommendations and design proposals for the new system (Selladurai et al., 2020). Focus at this stage is on the changing environment that will impact the nursing environment.

Implementation. This stage fuses the design framework of the new system into the present system. The role of the nurse leader at this level is to ensure the integrity of patients' data and the effective execution of the transfer to the new system. Systems implementation is done by coordinating efforts of the system engineers to recognize the needs of the nurses about patients' healthcare records.

Post-implementation support. This progression includes changing and refreshing the framework once it is set up. To ensure that the recipients of the new system utilize and effectively execute the hallmarks of the new system, a nursing leader undertakes a review of the system against desirable formulations at the initial stages of the implementation framework. The role of the nursing leader is to ensure the proper utilization of historical data to gauge the present performance and quality of data analysis using the new system.

Challenges faced by Nurse Leaders in their Implementation of HITS

Developing and implementing a new healthcare information technology system is an arduous task that only the most resilient nurse manager and leader can pull through. Allard (2020) states that this activity is marred with various uncertainties and resistance to change by other healthcare professionals and nurses. However, when the nursing leader overcomes the negative attitude and energy towards change, the healthcare organization stands to benefit immensely from the adoption of team management skills and expertise portrayed by the nurse leader.

Summary and Conclusion

The role of a nurse leader in the healthcare profession has received great discussion in the present times. As the healthcare industry transitions from hands-on service delivery. Most professionals adapt to the technological changes to foster more significant concern to informatics and the evaluation of healthcare data to identify trends in the healthcare industry as well as formulate measures and policies that seek to improve healthcare services. Throughout the needs analysis stage to implementation and review stages of the systems development life cycle, nurse leaders are responsible for keeping the pull of experts together, they are the fabric that keeps the team motivated and focused on delivering the expectations of quality healthcare provision.

References

Allard, B. L. (2020). INSPIREd Healthcare: A Value-Based Care Coordination Model. Sigma Theta Tau.

McNett, M. (2020). Introduction: Why data matter. In Data for Nurses (pp. 1-11). Academic Press.

Pepper, C. (2020). Informatics Instruction: An Informal Needs Assessment Survey. Medical Reference Services Quarterly, 39(2), 211-217. https://doi.org/10.1080/02763869.2020.1741306

Selladurai, R., Hobson, C., Selladurai, R. I., & Greer, A. (Eds.). (2020). Evaluating Challenges and Opportunities for Healthcare Reform. IGI Global.