Paging Nurse Educators to Informatics!
Six years after being a registered nurse, I was finally introduced to the concept of health informatics and how it relates to nursing. I vaguely remember the word informatics being thrown around in nursing school lectures, but with the amount of information a student nurse must absorb and regurgitate during those weekly exams it is almost impossible for everything to stick. It was during a graduate course aptly named Nursing Informatics that I finally understood the area of expertise nurses can work in and how they influence and shape healthcare.
Nursing Informatics is defined by the American Nurses Association as "the specialty that integrates nursing science with multiple information management and analytical sciences to identify, define, manage, and communicate data, information, knowledge, and wisdom in nursing practice" (ANA, 2014). Essentially, nursing informatics a field of study in which RNs systematically collect, analyze, interpret, manipulate, and apply nursing information to assist clinical nurses in providing the latest, up-to-date therapies, treatments, and facts in order to implement as evidence based guidelines (Sewell, 2018, p. 6).
Blazun-Vosner et al. (2020) analyzed 3,805 nursing publications dating back to Florence Nightingale's time in order to study the historical roots of nursing informatics. Interestingly, it was Nightingale herself that stated part of the nursing profession should involve accessing and interpreting biomedical literature in order to implement the best nursing practices to our patients. In this analysis the nursing informatics area went from assisting practitioners in making diagnoses by watching for signs and symptoms to nurse-led solutions to problems such as CAUTI, CLABSI, medication adherence, prevention strategies, and access to healthcare via telehealth nursing (Blazun-Vosner et al., 2020).
References
American Nurses Association. (2014). Nursing Informatics: Scope and Standards of Practice. 2nd ed. Silver Spring, MD: American Nursing Association: https://www.nursingworld.org/nurses-books/nursing-informatics-scopeand-standards-of-practice-2nd-ed/.
Blazun-Vosner, H., Carter-Templeton, H., Zavrsnik, J. & Kokol, P. (2020). Nursing Informatics: A Historical Bibliometric Analysis. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 38, 331-337. https://doi.org/10.1097/CIN.0000000000000624
Forman, T. M., Armor, D. A., & Miller, A. S. (2020). A Review of Clinical Informatics Competencies in Nursing to Inform Best Practices in Education and Nurse Faculty Development. Nursing Education Perspectives, 41(1), E3–E7. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.nep.0000000000000588
Sewell, J. (2018). Informatics and Nursing (6th ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Wolters Kluwer.
Nursing Informatics is defined by the American Nurses Association as "the specialty that integrates nursing science with multiple information management and analytical sciences to identify, define, manage, and communicate data, information, knowledge, and wisdom in nursing practice" (ANA, 2014). Essentially, nursing informatics a field of study in which RNs systematically collect, analyze, interpret, manipulate, and apply nursing information to assist clinical nurses in providing the latest, up-to-date therapies, treatments, and facts in order to implement as evidence based guidelines (Sewell, 2018, p. 6).
Blazun-Vosner et al. (2020) analyzed 3,805 nursing publications dating back to Florence Nightingale's time in order to study the historical roots of nursing informatics. Interestingly, it was Nightingale herself that stated part of the nursing profession should involve accessing and interpreting biomedical literature in order to implement the best nursing practices to our patients. In this analysis the nursing informatics area went from assisting practitioners in making diagnoses by watching for signs and symptoms to nurse-led solutions to problems such as CAUTI, CLABSI, medication adherence, prevention strategies, and access to healthcare via telehealth nursing (Blazun-Vosner et al., 2020).
In an oversimplified statement: nurse researchers obtain the health data, nurse informaticists collect the data to form protocols and guidelines, and finally, clinical nurses implement evidence based practice.The nursing informatics clinical competencies are currently not being taught in undergraduate or graduate nursing programs in the US (Forman, Armor & Miller, 2020).
From experience, the research courses taken during a BSN curiculum does not stress the importance of increasing the nurse informaticists population. Nurse educators can perhaps teach a historical perspective, as meticulously outlined by Blazun-Vosner et al. (2020) may shift the view of nursing informatics from abstract to concrete.
References
American Nurses Association. (2014). Nursing Informatics: Scope and Standards of Practice. 2nd ed. Silver Spring, MD: American Nursing Association: https://www.nursingworld.org/nurses-books/nursing-informatics-scopeand-standards-of-practice-2nd-ed/.
Blazun-Vosner, H., Carter-Templeton, H., Zavrsnik, J. & Kokol, P. (2020). Nursing Informatics: A Historical Bibliometric Analysis. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 38, 331-337. https://doi.org/10.1097/CIN.0000000000000624
Forman, T. M., Armor, D. A., & Miller, A. S. (2020). A Review of Clinical Informatics Competencies in Nursing to Inform Best Practices in Education and Nurse Faculty Development. Nursing Education Perspectives, 41(1), E3–E7. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.nep.0000000000000588
Sewell, J. (2018). Informatics and Nursing (6th ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Wolters Kluwer.
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