post a discussion to agree or disagree on nursing informatics

Main Post 

Nursing informatics is a key player in what makes a healthcare organization run efficiently, safely, and cost effective. According to the American Nurses Association (ANA) nursing informatics is “the specialty that transforms data into needed information and leverages technologies to improve health and health care equity, safety, quality, and outcomes,” this specialty has become increasingly more important as healthcare has continued to grow in advance in both technology and the patient care experience (2021). I currently work as a bedside nurse in a hospital, and while we do not ever see the people who collect and analyze all of the data it is known they are there just by acknowledging and seeing all of the important changes that are made to our and the patients experience everyday. 

Data specialists interact with other professions in the hospital daily, they promote and encourage interdisciplinary care just by doing their jobs. Interdisciplinary care is a key factor in allowing the hospital to run effectively and efficiently, it also allows for our natural leaders in each department o step forward and help to make the necessary changes needed to improve patient care (Victoria Department of Health, 2021). I feel that data specialists play a large role in facilitating this because they are on of the few jobs that get to actively participate with all employees of the hospital frequently. They are consistently observing and collecting data from each aspect that makes up the interdisciplinary team (Sweeney, 2019). For example the specialist could speak to the doctors about nurse to doctor communication and where there would be room for improvements, they could then go back to the nurses and ask the same questions and find out where each discipline could meet in the middle to improve the overall communication of doctors and nurses.

Working in the hospital a large suggestion I would make to improve the strategies between the specialists and staff would be to integrate the specialists into the staffs daily lives more. While we know they are doing a ton of important work behind the scenes in order to create policies and plans that keep everyone safe and happy it would be nice to put a face to the people working so hard for us. I think this would not only encourage compliance for the changes they decide to make but would make the staff more comfortable to come to them with their own ideas on how to improve quality in both patient care and the staffs work environments. 

Nursing informatics will not be going anywhere anytime soon. It continues to play in an important role in the hospitals and all other healthcare facilities. I think as technology grows and more science develops nursing informatics and the positions that go along with them will only continue to expand and become more complex that it will require a change among the professional interactions in order to collect and analyze adequate data. Specialists will also be needed to help introduce new policy and guidelines for all of the new advancements that we will see in healthcare over the next 20 years. Nursing informatics will most likely become one of the largest healthcare fields that we have at that point in time. 

The scope of Nursing Informatics Practice. American Nurses Association . (2021). https://www.nursingworld.org/~49c602/globalassets/…

State Government of Victoria, Australia. (2021, October 24). An interdisciplinary approach to caring. Department of Health. Victoria, Australia. https://www.health.vic.gov.au/patient-care/an-inte…