Informatics Roles and the Knowledge Work of Nursing
Today’s fast-paced health care environment demands nurses to be skilled not only in their clinical practice or specialty area but in the use of technology tools that improve practice and lead to better patient care. Basic and advanced technology competencies are required and expected as technology increasingly touches and changes the job of every nurse.
Numerous organizations, including the American Nurses Association (ANA), the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), and Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), have developed nurse-specific technology competencies. The challenge for nurses is to identify both needs and training opportunities.
In this Discussion, you identify the role informatics plays in your professional responsibilities. You pinpoint personal gaps in skills and knowledge and then develop a plan for self-improvement.
To prepare:
Review Nursing Informatics: Scope and Standards of Practice in this week’s Learning Resources, focusing on the different functional areas it describes. Consider which areas relate to your current nursing responsibilities or to a position you held in the past. For this Discussion, identify one or two of the most relevant functional areas.
Review the list of competencies recommended by the TIGER Initiative. Identify at least one skill in each of the main areas (basic computer competencies, information literacy competencies, and information management competencies) that is pertinent to your functional area(s) and in which you need to strengthen your abilities. Consider how you could improve your skills in these areas and the resources within your organization that might provide training and support.
By Day 3
Post the key functional area(s) of nursing informatics relevant to your current position or to a position you recently held, and briefly describe why this area(s) is relevant. Identify the TIGER competencies you selected as essential to your functional area(s) in which you need improvement. Describe why these competencies are necessary and outline a plan for developing these competencies. Include any resources that are available to you within your organization and the ways you might access those resources. Assess how developing nursing informatics competencies would increase your effectiveness as a nurse.
At least 3 references needed
Resources
American Nurses Association. (2015). Nursing informatics: Scope & standards of practice (2nd ed.). Silver Springs, MD: Author.
“Functional Areas for Nursing Informatics”
This chapter describes the key functional areas of nursing informatics. It also clarifies the roles of informatics nurse specialists and informatics nurses.
“Informatics Competencies: Spanning Careers and Roles”
This chapter details an informatics competencies matrix that has been developed by reviewing research. It outlines best practices for successful use of health information technology.
McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (2015). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (3rd ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett Learning.
Chapter 7, “Informatics Roles and the Knowledge Work of Nursing”
This chapter details the roles, competencies, and skills that ensure effective nursing informatics practice. The text also details the future of nursing informatics.
Chapter 8, “Information and Knowledge Needs of Nurses in the 21st Century”
In this chapter, the author emphasizes the need for embedding the core concepts and competencies of informatics into the practice of nurses. The chapter describes how this integration of concepts and competencies is necessitated by the integration of clinical information technologies into nursing practice.
Wakefield, M. K. (2008). The Quality Chasm series: Implications for nursing. In R. G. Hughes (Ed.), Patient safety and quality: An evidence-based handbook for nurses (Vol. 1, pp. 47–66). Rockville, MD: U. S. Department of Health and Human Services. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2677/