- NURS FPX 4040 Assessment 1 Nursing Informatics in Health Care.
Nursing Informatics in Health Care
Nursing informatics is, therefore, a subspecialty of nursing that incorporates technology, health information, and often nursing care and data in its functions. This system has embraced electronic records for health, telehealth, and telemedicine (Tiase & Carroll, 2022). The security and protection of patients’ information are among the most critical responsibilities of nurse informatics.
They utilize their technological and informational systems’ technical know-how to turn data and information into valuable profits by boosting healthcare results. Furthermore, they firmly support telehealth, emphasizing client monitoring, early patient interventions, and enhancement of healthcare availability, especially to vulnerable groups.
Nursing Informatics and the Role of Nurse Informaticist
With its definitive and prominent definition of nursing informatics, scholarship often encompasses the combination of nursing, computer, and information science to address and communicate data related to nursing practice. According to the American Nurses Association, nursing informatics integrates nursing and information communication technology and related sciences (Peltonen et al., 2023). It assists in acknowledging, discussing, managing, and communicating data, information, knowledge, and wisdom in nursing practice (Reid, Jackline, Donnan, Smith, & McHugh, 2021).
NURS FPX 4040 Assessment 1 Nursing Informatics in Health Care
One use is to improve the quality of patient care delivery, the efficiency of medical processes, and the effectiveness of healthcare workers’ decision-making.
Nurse informatics is a profession at the frontier of defining and directing an organization’s health IT. It comprises instruments used to measure clinician data and tools that ensure that healthcare is safe and efficient (Sensmeier & Anderson, 2020). NI specialists work in numerous contexts with different titles, like NI clinicians, clinical informatics coordinators, and IT CNs (Nam, 2023). Some of their responsibilities include adopting enhanced processes of storing and securing patients’ medical information and coordinating the adoption of emerging technologies for practitioners.
The nurse informaticist integrates telehealth technology for rural or health-deprived societies. These roles include actualizing the technology, educating the users, handling data, ensuring quality, and working closely with other healthcare team members (Schoenbaum et al., 2020).
They also establish essential roles in the didacticization of telehealth technologies, secure management of health information, and assessment of the effect of telehealth on health styles. In addition, they liaise interdisciplinarily to address populations and the need to incorporate telehealth approaches that will meet the needs of people residing in rural areas.
Nurse Informaticist and the Other Health Care Organization
Telehealth technologies are driven chiefly by nurse informatics in any healthcare organization. Due to their specialization in health informatics, they can also manage details, ensure that the telehealth systems are easy to integrate into the existing processes and provide relevant training to the nursing staff (Tiase & Carroll, 2022).
When a matter is being implemented relating to telehealth, the nurse informaticist acts as a connector between the nursing staff and the interdisciplinary staff to ensure that they understand and practice as per the requirements of the other (Booth et al., 2021). Integrating telehealth has been fertile ground for developing the communication channel with nurse informatics, which acts as an intermediary to foster positive outcomes of the integration.
This paper outlines the position of an Informatics Nurse Administrator at the Mayo Clinic and how the position ensures interdisciplinary cooperation and quantifiable improvement to patient care with the help of technologists. The administrator supervises informatics processes and spearheads improvement projects of clinical functions, methods, decisions, quality, and scholarly production (Mayo Clinic, 2023).
Thus, the administrator oversees the coordination of informatics processes to organizational goals and synergistically governs and supervises the creation, enactment, and assessment of computer applications and patient care technology.
The administrator engages with the planning and implementing clinical/nursing systems technology improvements and demonstrates support and cooperation with technologists to include advancements in various related patient care settings. In turn, the administrator engages in community service and committee work as part of Mayo Clinic’s culture of striving to advance healthcare services.
Impact of Full Nurse Engagement in Healthcare Technology
Patient care
The patients are affected in a way that nurse informatics helped elevate the nurses’ involvement in telehealth. They could monitor the patients and give necessary assistance through distant means, as well as help create means of accessing healthcare for the communities previously left unheard.
This is achieved by formulating and utilizing strategies that include telehealth, whereby nurses can assess patients with chronic diseases and administer timely interventions by only using telephone calls to ensure patients’ compliance with the medications (Bulto, 2024).
This has dramatically affected the underprivileged sections of society, who rarely get access to conventional healthcare services. Therefore, nurse informatics is crucial in influencing patient outcomes, increasing the telehealth connection and implementing remote monitoring methods.
Solutions and Recommendations for the Protection of PHI
With telehealth, nurse informaticists, as well as other members of the healthcare teams, can address the management and utilization of Protected Health Information (PHI) through the application of evidence-based practice. This entails ensuring routine staff training concerning privacy measures, risk analysis and organization standardization to the recommended practices (Park & Jeong, 2021).
Thus, the mentioned strategies ensure the proper protection of PHI, contributing to maintaining a safe and confidential telehealth platform for remote and underserved clients, per the findings of Luque and collaborators (2020).
Moreover, evidence-based strategies include strict measures as applied in PHI to protect the disclosed and made available privacy, security, and confidentiality (Rajnath et al., 2023). Consequently, nurse informaticists protect PHI by implementing strong security measures, including encrypting patient data in healthcare facilities.
Workflow and Return on Investment
Regarding workflow, nurse informaticists improve flows or arrangements so that there is an effective virtual consultancy, minimized documentation work, and better interaction between healthcare staff. In addition, an article by Iuppa (2023) outlines a method for defining the worth of strictly nurse-focused informatics resources by stating a four-step process for determining the overall cost of such home facilities.
This entails strategically linking nursing informatics work to the organization’s strategy, objectives, and critical competencies. It refers to identifying additional services offered, stating the advantages for the stakeholders, and providing specific illustrations of the cost savings made through the practical application of these resources compared to other groups that lack proficiency in skillful work.
Opportunities and Challenges
The use of nurse informatics integration proposes mixed blessings and threats to nurses and other members of an interprofessional team delivering telehealth technologies to advance healthcare to clients in distant and rural areas. On the positive side, through stewardship of more significant amounts and varieties of health information, nurse informaticists help others make better decisions (Tiase & Carroll, 2022).
This can facilitate their work within the interdisciplinary team when it comes to sharing data with others. Garcia et al. (2023) also revealed that the position of the nurse informaticist increases system efficiency through the use of technology in scheduling, monitoring, and following up on tasks.
Such time-saving leads to better time planning for the interdisciplinary team and reduces the number of hours the nurses spend on administrative-related duties, therefore providing better health outcomes to fellow remote and underprivileged communities.
This integration comes with some problems that call for preventive measures. Healthcare professionals’ knowledge regarding technology may differ; thus, the nurse informaticist may proactively need to establish training programs to ensure everyone is competent in the use of technology (Haupeltshofer et al., 2020).
Additionally, protecting the patient’s information and right to privacy requires an enhanced approach to data protection, an aspect that RNs working as nurse informatics specialists can help immensely (Park & Jeong, 2021). Integration and buy-in can also encounter interoperability challenges between the technologies and attitude of resistance from the team working on implementing the telehealth solutions.
Interdisciplinary Team Collaboration Strategies for Quality Care Outcomes
Collaboration between interdisciplinary professionals is needed to reduce nurse informatics’ challenges and harness the benefits available in the field. Habits of daily training sessions, policy on matters to be communicated, and use of data in decision-making improve the cohesiveness and performance of the team (Park & Jeong, 2021; Meehan & Sharp, 2023).
Furthermore, embracing the technology-supported patient-centric care delivery model can enhance patients’ experience, thus promoting health among rural and other hard-to-reach populations (Bhati et al., 2023). Therefore, the nurse informaticist position plays an intermediary role within the changing world of healthcare, advancing the integration and application of technologies supporting patient care.
Summary of Recommendations
Nurse informaticists can organize telehealth technologies and contribute to solving various healthcare issues and enhancing distant communities. Garcia et al. (2023) supported that employees’ expertise is central to managing technology. Consistent with the literature, nurse informaticists’ work globally has processes encompassing system integration, end-user training, data management, and collaboration with other disciplines, all of which are part of the complex FFT strategy (Schoenbaum et al., 2020).
The benefits range from timely, accurate, and well-managed data to improved communication, demonstrating the stakeholders’ benefits of nurse informaticists. At the same time, important issues concerning technology literacy and data security are also addressed cleverly (Tiase & Carroll, 2022). Personal accounts support the nurse informaticist’s relevance, proving the need for such a figure’s presence in healthcare organizations to have effective telehealth services and follow standards for enhancing patient care outcomes.
Conclusion
Using telehealth technologies to promote solutions based on health information exchange and patient engagement, with the help of nurse informatics specialists, can be seen as both promising and problematic.
The nurse informatics specialist boosts data processing, sharing, workflow, and consumers’ experiences. However, some problems, including technology knowledge, data protection, compatibility, and organizational resistance, cannot be disregarded.
Recommendation: Nurse informatics contributes to healthcare organizations by influencing the care provided, patients’ protected information, working processes, and expenditures. Finally, nurse informatics is central to such a process for telehealth adoption to be effective for the referred, remote and underserved groups.
References
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