The pandemic-driven technological revolution has impacted the healthcare industry more in the past two years than at any other time in history. While some changes represent temporary measures, the rapid emergence of digital solutions for clinicians is a trend that is likely to continue. No matter how effective these technologies are, change is disruptive, and opposition to change is an innate and natural tendency that affects all of us, including doctors and nurses.
To mitigate these human-centred barriers and ensure disruption is minimized, special care must be taken when designing and implementing new technologies used by clinicians. Nursing informatics is a growing field that aims to bridge the gap between a healthcare organization’s technology systems and its clinical staff. In this new era of digitally-driven healthcare, nurse informatics play a key role in ensuring the long-term success of new technologies and the doctors, nurses, and staff who use them.
What is Nursing Informatics?
Nursing informatics specialists have played a key role in managing technological change since healthcare organizations began moving to EHRs. Despite its decades of history, nursing informatics is a little recognized field. Part of the reason may be that the roles are not well defined. For example, some people think that nursing informatics falls under the category of medical or clinical informatics, while others think it needs its own unique definition.according to American Nurses AssociationNursing informatics combines “the science of nursing with diverse information and analytical sciences to identify, define, manage and communicate data, information, knowledge and wisdom”.
The day-to-day responsibilities of a nurse informaticist vary according to the unique information management-related needs of an organization. Generally, nurse informatics play an important role in designing and building healthcare information systems, in addition to selecting, implementing, and connecting these systems for clinical use. Nurse informatics can also work in a variety of settings outside of hospitals and healthcare systems, including organizations that do not directly treat patients, such as technology providers or EHR companies.
Because of their unique training as registered nurses and information technology specialists, nurse informatics understand how all the pieces fit together and provide valuable insights into how to design systems to optimize usability. Understanding how all systems and departments within an organization work together is a critical part of streamlining healthcare operations and making it easier for providers to focus on what matters most – their patients.
Closing the value gap
As today’s healthcare professionals navigate a healthcare organization filled with numerous disconnected technology systems, the demand for nurse informatics has increased significantly. This need is further amplified as the systems needed to provide quality patient care have multiplied in response to the pandemic. While digital devices and software solutions can help enhance a provider’s ability to deliver high-quality patient care, it’s not just about owning the technology — it’s about making sure it’s implemented correctly.
Research has shown that technology can have a negative impact if the clinician’s perspective is not taken into account.For example, in a recent survey Nearly one-third (32.7%) of more than 15,000 healthcare workers said they were frustrated with medical technology at least 3-5 days a week. The survey also found that frustration with technology was associated with higher levels of emotional exhaustion and worse work-life balance. Technology is not the cause of burnout – it is how technology is implemented. And that’s where the role of nurse informatics fits in — determining how best to design and implement technology to help healthcare workers, not hinder them.
The benefits of simplifying clinician adoption and use of technology cannot be overemphasized. In addition to reducing the burden on providers, nurse informatics play a vital role in improving the quality of care and optimizing patient outcomes. For example, one of the many benefits of incorporating technology into healthcare is that it enables providers to gather more information about their patients. However, this data is only useful if it is effectively collected, analyzed and applied, and this only happens if the provider has easy access to the organization’s EHR system. Nurse informatics help ensure that the EHR is easy for providers to use and optimally designed to fit an organization’s workflow. The less time providers spend using inefficient technology, the more time they can focus on getting and sharing the right information about their patients.
More recently, the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of healthcare systems developing strategies to facilitate the effective and efficient implementation of telehealth solutions. Nurse informatics have been instrumental in evaluating telehealth platforms to ensure the technology is compatible with practice guidelines in outpatient and hospital settings, in addition to helping implement these systems and training providers on how to use them effectively.
Ultimately, a holistic and data-driven approach to patient care and healthcare operations benefits providers, employees, patients and organizations. As the role of technology in healthcare continues to expand, so will the role of nursing informatics in helping healthcare organizations adopt, effectively implement, and derive long-term value from new technologies that improve outcomes for patients and providers alike.
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