Nursing Informatics And Nursing

Sir, can you please step up to the glass, put your palm on the screen and follow the directions from the computer? This is where our future lies…in biometrics, computers, and science. Soon there will be no need to fill out tedious paperwork, to try to remember medications or past medical history. I know it exists in hospitals across America, I have seen it in action many times. Are we as nurses changing with the times? What is nursing informatics? Why is it important to me? How do I rate on the nursing informatics knowledge scale? What is my plan to increase my knowledge base? These questions should be at the forefront of every nurse’s thoughts. The information age has come crashing down on us from every possible angle in our lives, it affects how we communicate, how we educate, how we socialize and how we raise our children. Thus, why would nursing be immune to technology? These reasons alone should prompt each nurse to take inventory of their ability to effectively apply nursing informatics and utilize it for critical thinking and collaborative efforts when applying it to the nursing process. Each of us should be able to use technology to filter our pertinent information and collaborate with other professionals and apply this knowledge in our day to day patient care.

During the evolution of technology, in order to remain germane, nursing began to use the science of computers. The act of blending computer information along with healthcare information, building a data base and applying it to the care of the patient, that is what nursing informatics is all about. In order to effectively use the process of nursing informatics, nurses must first truly understand the definition of nursing informatics. There is a large segment of th...

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...time it takes to retrieve medical history and yes we can port the patient’s current medications over from the local pharmacy or the mail in pharmacy, or heck, we can even reproduce a patient’s medical file from Tacoma, Washington to Miami, Florida in the time it takes to say “yes, please”, but what nurses need to remember is all these technologies are tools. Tools to equip the nurse with as much information as possible to be able to render patient care, but nothing will take the place of the human touch.

References

Kaminski, J. (n.d.) P.A.T.C.H. assessment scale v. 3., Retrieved from http://nursing-informaatics.com/niassess/plan.html

Murphy, J. (2011). The Nursing Informatics Workforce: Who Are They and What Do They Do?. Nursing Economic$, 29(3), 150-153

Sullivan, F. (2001). What is health informatics? Journal Of Health Services Research & Policy, 6(4)., pg 251