Assignment: The Nurse Leader as Knowledge Worker (PowerPoint)

In the last few years, the health care organization had taken the necessary steps that are required to implement various safety measures and to ensure the well-being of all the patients in the hospital. Documents were translated from paper documentation into the electronic medical record (EMR) on portable mobile devices or electronic tablets (Nagle et al., 2017). Each patient in the inpatient unit has a wristband to safeguard the six rights of medication administration to reduce the likelihood of medical errors. The health care organization has made exceptional advancement. However, some areas require revision, particularly the nurse in hospital homecare.

During one event while utilizing the MUMMS software to gather data such as lab reports, clinical documentation, and vital signs. A patient was diagnosed with bradycardia and was discharged from the health care organization with the wrong drugs or medication due to the medication reconciliation error (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017). The health care organization realized that the software misplaced prior orders for the medication unintentionally. Now that I am out in the field, paying a visit to the home of patients, I understand how errors can occur. We have switched to a system known as MUMMS that gathers information such as the history of the patient, vital signs, medication profiles, and physicals.

To prevent the errors from occurring, I think that another common or known EMR such as EPIC should be used to access, share, organize, and store electronic medical records. EPIC is more suitable for more prominent hospitals. Nursing informatics has been advancing to ensure the safety of patients in hospitals. Nursing informatics involves computer science, nursing science, and information science to communicate and manage information, knowledge, and data within the nursing practice.

The use of informatics, the health care facilities have converted into technological systems where patient’s information is gathered, and healthcare professions can retrieve data, (Sweeney, 2017). Electronic health care records have also helped improve the safety and quality of patient's care. Also, information technology has improved the communication of patient's medical information. Integrated systems allow nurses and management to examine any problems in the current setting and look for ways it can improve.

References

McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (2017). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (4th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Nagle, L. M., Sermeus, W., Junger, A., & Bloomberg, L. S. (2017). Evolving Role of the Nursing Informatics Specialist. Forecasting Informatics Competencies for Nurses in the Future of Connected Health, 212.

Sweeney, J. (2017). Healthcare informatics. Online Journal of Nursing Informatics, 21, 4-1.